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. . : • ■'

MISS LULU BETT

•>

^^H

MISS LULU BETT

ZONA GALE

AUTHOR OF

FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES, Etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH

SCENES PROM THE PLAY

PRODUCED BY BROCE PEMBERTON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ABBE

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Mub in ike Unilal SUUI of A

571169

COPTBIQHTt 1920t BT

D. AFFLETON AND COMPANY

• ••

URITBD OTA1

CONTENTS

I. AfbiIj 1

n. Mat 81

nL June . . 67

IV. JULT • . . 89

V. August .••••••••• m

VI. Septembeb ..••••••• 153

APRIL

Miss Lulu Bett

^h pertl;
^ft^ carde

tiful," too. In October he might he heard
asking: "Where's my beautiful fall coat?"

"We have creamed salmon," replied Mrs.
Deacon gently. "On toast," she added, with
a scrupulous regard for the whole truth.
Why she should say this so gently no one
can tell. She says everything gently. Her
"Could you leave me another bottle of milk
tiiis morning?" would wring a milkman's
heart.

"Well, now, let us see," said Mr. Deacon,
and attacked the principal dish benignly.
"Let us see," he added, as he served.

"I don't want any," said Monona,

The child Monona was seated upon a book
and a cushion, so that her httle triangle of
nose rose adultly above her plate. Her re-
mark produced precisely the effect for which
she had passionately hoped.

"What's this?" cried Mr. Deacon. "No
salmon?"

"No," said Monona, inflected up, chin
pertly pointed. She felt her power, dis-
carded her "sir."

April

"Oh now, Petl" from Mrs. Deacon, oa
three notes. "You liked it before."

"I don't want any," said Monona, in pre-
cisely her original tone.

"Just a little? A very little?" Mr. Dea-
con persuaded, spoon dripping.

The child Monona made her lips thin and
straight and shook her head until her straight
hair flapped in her eyes on either side. Mr.
Deacon's eyes anxiously consulted his wife's
eyes. What is this? Their progeny will
not eat? What can be supplied?

"Some bread and milkl" cried Mrs. Dea-
con brightly, exploding on "bread." One
wondered how she thought of it.

"No," said Monona, inflection up, chin
the same. She was affecting indifference to
this scene, in which her soul delighted. She
twisted her head, bit her Ups unconcernedly,
and turned her eyes to the remote. ,

There emerged from the fringe of things,
where she perpetually hovered, Mrs. Dea-
con's older sister. Lulu Bett, who was "mat- •
ing her home with us." And that was pre-

1;^ mg her home

Miss Lulu Bett

eisely the ease. They vreTe not making her
a home, goodness knows. Lulu was the
family beast of burden,

"Can't I make her a little milk toast?"
she asked Mrs. Deacon.

Mrs. Deacon hesitated, not with com-
punction at accepting Lulu's offer, not dip-
lomatically to lure Monona, But she hesi-
tated habitually, by nature, as another is by
nature vivacious or brunette.

"Yes I" shouted the child Monona.
The tension relaxed. Mrs. Deacon as-
sented. Lulu went to the kitchen. Mr.
Deacon served on. Something of this scene
was enacted every day. For Monona the
drama never lost its zest. It never occurred
to the otliers to let her sit without eating,
once, as a cure-all. The Deacons were de-
voted parents and the child Monona was
I delicate.' She had a white, grave face, white
hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. She was
sullen, anaemic. They let her wear rings.
She "toed in." The poor child was the late
birth of a late marriage and the principal

icipal

April

joy which she had provided them thus far
was the pleased reflection that they had pro-
duced her at all.

"Where's your mother, Ina?" Mr. Dea-
con inquired. "Isn't she coming to her sup-
per?"

"Tantrim," said Mrs. Deacon, softly.

"Oh, ho," said he, and said no more.

The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived
with them, had days of high vibration when
she absented herself from the table as a
kind of self-indulgence, and no one could
persuade her to food. "Tantrims," they
called these occasions.

"Baked potatoes," said Mr. Deacon.
"That's good — that's good. The baked po-
tato contains more nourishment than pota-
toes prepared in any other way. The nour-
ishment is next to the skin. Roasting
retains it."

"That's what I always think," aaid lus
wife pleasantly.

For fifteen years tfaey had agreed about

Miss Lulu Bett

They ate, in the indecent silence of first
savouring food. A delicate crunching of
crust, an odour of baked-potato shells, the
slip and touch of the silver.

"Num, num, nummy-mim I" sang the
child Slonona loudly, and was hushed by
both parents in simultaneous exclamation
which rivalled this IjtIc outburst. They
were alone at table. Di, daughter of a wife
early lost to Mr. Deacon, was not there.
Di was hardly ever there. She was at that
age. That age, in Warbleton.

A clock struck the half hour.

"It's curious," Mr. Deacon observed*
"how that clock loses. It must be fully quar-
ter to," He consulted his watch. "It is
quarter to!" he exclaimed with satisfaction.
"I'm pretty good at guessing time."

"I've noticed that!" cried his Ina.

"Last night, it was only twenty-three to,
when the half hour struck," he reminded
her.

"Twenty-one, I thought." She

I
I

: was ten-^H

r April

tative, regarded him with arched eyebrows,
..mastication suspended.

This point was never to be settled. The

I colloquy was interrupted by the child Mo-

Imona, whining for her toast. And the door-

|bell raiig.

"Dear me I" said Mr. Deacon. "What

' can anybody be thinking of to call just at
meal-time?"

He trod the hall, flung open the street
door. Mrs. Deacon Ustened. Lulu, com-
ing in with the toast, was warned to silence
by an uplifted finger. She deposited the
toast, tiptoed to her chair. A withered
baked potato and cold creamed salmon were
on her plate. The child Monona ate with
shocking appreciation. Nothing could be
made of the voices in the hall. But Mrs.
Bett's door was heard softly to unlatch.
She, too, was Ustening.

A ripple of excitement was caused in the

Com when Mr. Deacon was divined
some one to the parlour. Mr. Dea-
d speak with this visitor in a few

Miss Lulu Bett

moments, and now returned to his table. It
was notable how slight a thing would give
him a sense of self-importance. Now he felt
himself a man of affairs, could not even have
a quiet supper with his family without the
outside world demanding him. He waved
his hand to indicate it was nothing which
they would know anything about, resumed
liis seat, served himself to a second spoon
of salmon and remarked, "More roast duck,
anybody?" in a loud voice and with a slow
wink at his wife. That lady at first looked
blank, as she always did in the presence of
any humour couched with the least indirec-
tion, and then drew back her chin and caught
her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth. This
was her conjugal rebuking,

Swedenborg always uses "conjugial."
And really this sounds more married. It
should be used with reference to the Dea-
cons. No one was ever more married than
they — at least than Mr. Deacon. He made
little conjugal jokes in the presence of Lulu
who, now completely unnerved by the habit.

April

suspected them where they did not exist,
feared lurking entendre in the most inno-
cent comments, and became more tense every
hour of her life.

And now the eye of the master of the
house fell for the first time upon the yellow
tulip in the centre of his table.

"Well, well!" he said. "What's this?"
I Ina Deacon produced, fleetly, an un-
looked-for dimple.

"Have you been buying flowers?" the
master inquired.
I "Ask Lulu," said Mrs. Deacon.
I He turned his attention full upon Lulu.

"Suitors?" he inquired, and his lips left
their places to form a sort of ruff about the
word.

Lulu flushed, and her eyes and their very
brows appealed.

"It was a quarter," she said. "There'll
be five flowers."

"You bought it?"

"Yes, There'll be five — that's a nickel
apiece."

£ apiece.

Miss LmIu Bett

His tone was as methodical as if he had
been talking about the bread.

"Yet we give you a home on the supposi-
tion that you have no money to spend, even
for the necessities."

His voice, without resonance, cleft air,
thought, spirit, and even flesh.

Mrs. Deacon, indeterminately feeling her
guilt in ha^-ing let loose the dogs of her
husband upon Lidu, interposed: "Well,
but, Herbert — Lulu isn't strong enou^ to
work. What's the use. . . ."

She dwindled. For years the fiction had
been sustained that Lulu, the family beast
of burtlen, was not strong enough to work
anywhere else.

"The justice business " said Owigfat

Herbert Deacon — he was a justice <rf Uie

peace — "and the dental profession " he

was also a dentist — "do not warrant the
purchase of spring flowers in my bome-"

"Well, but, Herbert " It was his

wife again.

"No Btore,** he cried fane^, with a ^ig^
10

April

bend of his head. "Lulu meant no harm,"
he added, and smiled at Lulu.

There was a moment's silence into which
Monona injected a loud "Num, nuni, num-
my-num," as if she were the burden of an
Elizabethan lyric. She seemed to close the
incident. But the burden was cut off un-
timely. There was, her father reminded
her portentously, company in the parlour.

"When the bell rang, I was so afraid
something had happened to Di," said Ina
sighing.

"Let's see," said Di's father. "Where
is little daughter to-night?"

He must have known that she was at
Jenny Plow's at a tea party, for at noon
they had talked of nothing else; hut this
was his way. And Ina played his game,
always. She informed him, dutifully.

"Ob, lio," said he, absently. How could
he be expected to keep his mind on these
domestic trifles.

"We told you that this noon," said Lulu,
11

^^ we

Miss Lulu Bett

He frowned, disregarded her. Lulu had
DO delicacy.

"How much is salmon the can now?" he
inquired abruptly— this was one of his
forms of speech, the can, the pound, the
cord.

His partner supplied this information
with admirable promptness. Large size,
small size, present price, former price —
she had them all.

"Dear me," said Mr. Deacon. "That is
very nearly salmoney, isn't it?"

"Herbert!" his Ina admonished, in gen-
tle, gentle reproach. Mr. Deacon punned,
organically. In talk he often fell silent
and then asked some question, schemed to
permit his vice to flourish. Mrs. Deacon's
return was always automatic: ".fferbertl"

"Whose Bert?" he said to this. "I
thought I was your Bert."

She shook her httle head. "You are a .
ease," she told him. He beamed upon ;
her. It wa£ his intention to be a case.

Lulu rentnred in upon this pleasantry,
12

April

and cleared her throat. She was not hoarse,
but she was always clearing her throat.

"The hutter is about all gone," she ob-
served. "Shall I wait for the butter-woman
or get some creamery?"

Mr. Deacon now felt his little joculari-
ties lost before a wall of the matter of fact.
I He was not pleased. He saw himself as
I the light of his home, bringer of bright-
I ness, Ughtener of dull hours. It was a
j pretty role. He insisted upon it. To
\ maintain it intact, it was necessary to turn
\ upon their sister with concentrated irrita-
vtion.

"Kindly settle these matters without
bringing them to my attention at meal-
time," he said icily.

Lulu flushed and was silent. She was
an oUve woman, once handsome, now with
flat, bluish shadows under her wistful eyes.
And if only she would look at her brother
Herbert and say something. But she looked
in her plate.

Miss Lulu Bett

"I want some honey," shouted the child,
Moncxia.

"There isn't any. Pet," said Lulu.

*'I want some," said Monona, eyeing her
stonily. But she found that her hair-ribbon
could be pulled forward to meet her lips,
and she embarked on the biting of an end.
Lulu departed for some sauce and cake. It
was apple sauce. Mr. Deacon remarked that
the apples were almost as good as if he
bad stolen them. He was giving the im-
pression that he was an irrepressible fel-
low. He was eating very slowly. It added
pleasantly to his sense of importance to feel
that some one, there in the parlour, was
waiting his moticsi.

At length they rose. Monona flung her-
self upon her father. He put her aside
firmly, every inch iJie father. No, no.
Father was occupied now. Mrs. Deacon
coaxed her away. Monona encircled her
mother's waist, lifted her own feet from
the floor and hung upon her. "She's such
an actiTC child," Lulu ventured brightly,
14

^ April

"Not unduly active, I think," her brother-
in-law observed.

He turned upon Lulu his bri^t smile,
lifted his eyebrows, dropped his hds, stood
for a moment contemplating the yellow
tuhp, and so left the room.

Lulu cleared the table. Mrs. Deacon
essayed to wind the clock. Well now. Did
Herbert say it was twenty-three to-night
when it struck the half hour and twenty-
one last night, or twenty-one to-night and
last night twenty-three? She talked of it
as they cleared the table, hut Lulu did not
talk.

"Can't you remember?" Mrs. Deacon
said at last. "I should think you might be
useful."

Lulu was lifting the yellow tulip to set
it on the sill. She changed her mind.
She took the plant to the wood-ahed and
tumbled it with force upon the chip-pile.

The dining-room table was laid for break-
fast. The two women brought their work
aD<^. sat there. The child Monona himg
15

Miss Lulu Bett

miserably about, watching the clock. Right
tir wrong, she was put to bed by it. She
had eight minutes more — seven — six —

Liilu laid down her sewing and left the
ruoin. She went to tbe wood-shed, groped
about in the dark, found the stalk of the
one tulip flower in its heap on the chip-
pile. The tulip she fastened in her gown
on tier flat chest

Outside were to be seen the early stars.
It is said that if our sun were as near to
Arcturus as we are near to our sim, the
great Arcturus would burn our sun to
nothingness.

In the Deacons' parlour sat Bobby Lar-
kin, eighteen. He was in pain all over. He
was couie on an errand whi<^ Qvilisatioo
lias contrived to make an oideaL

Before him ou the table stood a pboto-
gtafh of Siidaa DeMOB^ ifa> eighteen. He
her vitt p«ssioiL. At
1«

I
1

He ■

April

mocked him, aped him, whispered about
him, tortured him. For two years he had
hated her. Nights he fell asleep planning
to budd a great house and engage her as
its servant.

Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his
eyes from this photograph. It was Di at
her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious
of her bracelet, Di smiling. Bobby gazed,
his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a
most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that
he would not see her, and he listened far
voice.

Mr. Deacon descended upon him with an
air carried from his supper hour, bland, dis-
pensing. Weill Let us have it. "What
did you wish to see me about?"— with a
Dse of the past tense as connoting some-
thing of indirection and hence of dehcacy —
a nicety customary, yet unconscious. Bobby
had arrived in his best clothes and with
an air of such formality that Mr, Deacon
bad instinctively suspected him of want-
ing to join the church, and, to treat the
17

Miss Lulu Bett

time with due solemnity, had put him in i
the parlour until he could attend at |
leisure.

Confronted thus by Di's father, Uk
speech which Bobby had planned deswied
>tini-

"I thought if you would give me a job,"
lie said defencelessly.

*'So that's it!" 5Ir. Deac<m, who always

awaited but a touch to be either irritable or

facetious, inclined now to be facetious.

'Tilling teeth?" he would know. "Marry-

p ing folks, then?" Assistant justice or assta* j

I tant dentist — whi<diT 1

Bobby blushed. Xo, no, but in that big
building of Mr, Deacon's where his office
was, wasn't there something ... It
faded from him, soimded ridiculous. Of
course there was nothing. He saw it
now.

There was ooUung, Mr. Deacon coa-J
firmed him. But Mr. Deacon had an idem*]
Hold on, he said — hold on. The
Would Bobby consider taking '
18

April

the grass? Though Mr, Deacon was of the
type which cuts its own grass and glories in
its vigour and its energy, yet in the time
after that which he called "dental hours"
]Mr. Deacon wished to work in his garden.
His grass, growing in late April rains,
would need attention early next month . . .
he owned two lots — "of course property is a
burden." If Bobby would care to keep
the grass down and raked . . . Bobby
would care, accepted this business oppor-
tunity, figures and all, thanked Mr. Deacon
with earnestness. Bobby's aversion to Di,
it seemed, should not stand in the way of
his advancement.

"Then that is checked off," said Mr.
Deacon heartily.

Bobby wavered toward the door, emerged
on the porch, and ran almost upon Di re-
turning from her tea-party at Jenny
Plow's.

"Oh, Bobbyl You came to see me?"

She was as fluffy, as curly, as smihng
as her picture. She was carrying pink,
19

Miss Lulu Beit

gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. Un-
deniably in her voice there was pleasure.
Her glance was startled but already coni-
placent. She paused on the steps, a lovely
figure.

But one would say that nothing but the
truth dwelt in Bobby.

"Oh, hullo," said he. "No, I came to
see your father."

He marched by her. His hair stuck up
at the back. His coat was hunched about
his shoulders. His insufficient nose, abun-
dant, loose-lipped mouth and brown eyes
were completely expressionless. He
marched by her without a glance.

She flushed with vexation. Mr. Deacon,
S5 one would expect, laughed loudly, took
the situation in his elephantine grasp and
pawed at it.

"Mammal Mamma! What do you s'pose?
Di thought she had a beau "

"Oh, papa!" said Di. "Why, I just hate
Bobby Laxkin and the whole sclmol knows
it."

I
I

iws ^1

April

Mr. Deacon returned to the dining-room,
humming in his throat. He entered upoa
a pretty scene.

His Ina was darning. Four minutes of
grace remaining to the child Monona, she
was spinning on one toe with some Baccha-
nalian idea of making the most of the
present. Di dominated, her ruffles, her
blue hose, her bracelet, her ring.

"Oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweet-
est party and the deafest supper and the
darlingest decorations and the gorgeous-

"Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight
Herbert Deacon. He was not sure what
he meant, but the good fellow felt some
violence done somewhere or other.

"Well," said Di positively, "they W)«w.
Papa, see my favour,"

She showed him a sugar dove, and he
ducked at it.

Ina glanced at them fondly, her face
assuming its loveliest light. She was often
Tidiculous, but always she was the happy

Miss lAilu Bett

wife and mother, and her role reduced her
indmdual absurdities at least to its own.

The door to the bedroom now opened and
Mrs. Bett appeared.

"Well, mother!" cried Herbert, the
"well" curving like an arm, the "mother"
descending like a brisk slap. "Hungry
noin?"

Mrs. Bett was hungry now. She had
ranerged intending to pass through the
room without speaking and find food in
the pantry. By obscure processes her son-
in-law's tone inhibited all this. J

"No," she said. "I'm not hungry." H

Now that she was there, she seemed un-
certain what to do. She looked from one
to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled
in her dignity. She brushed at her skirt,
the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catch-
ing an intenser blue from the dark cloth.
She put her hair behind her ears.

"We put a potato in the oven for you,"
said Ina. She had never learned quite how
to treat these periodic refusals of her mother
22

April

t eat, but she never had ceased to resent

, thank you," said Mrs. Bett. Evi-
dently she rather enjoyed the situation,
creating for herself a spot-hght much in the //
manner of Monona.

"Mother," said Lulu, "let me make you
some toast and tea."

Mrs. Bett turned her gentle, bloodlesg
^face toward her daughter, and her eyes
'armed.

"After a little, maybe," she said. "I
think I'U run over to see Grandma Gates
now," she added, and went toward the
door.

"Tell her," cried Dwigfat, "tell her ^'s
my best girl."

Grandma Gates was a rheumatic cripple
who lived next door, and whenever the Dea-
cons or Mrs, Bett were angry or hurt ot
wished to escape the house for Boroe reason,
they stalked over to Grandma Gates — in
lieu of, say, slamming a door. These visits
radiated an almost daily friendliness which

Miss Lulu Bett

lifted and tempered the old invalid's lot'
and life.

Di flashed out at the door again, on some
trivial permission.

"A good many of mamma's stitches in
that dress to keep clean," Ina called after.

"Earl}', darling, early!" her father re-
minded her. A faint regurgitation of his
was somehow invested with the paternal.

"What's this?" cried Dwight Herbert
Deacon abruptly.

On the clock shelf lay a letter.

"Ob, Dwight!" Ina was all compunctica..
"It came this morning. I forgot."

"I forgot it too! And I laid it up there.'
Lulu was eager for her share of the blame.

"Isn't it understood that my mail can't
wait like thisf'

Dwif^t's s«nse oi importance was now
being fed in gulps. I

"I know. I'm awfully sorry," Luhi saSdg
**but you hardly ever get a letter "

This might bare made things wcase> but

April

it provided Dwight with a greater im-
portance.

"Of course, pressing matter goes to my
office," he admitted it. "Still, my mail
sfaoidd have more careful "

He read, frowning. He replaced the
letter, and they hung upon his motions as
he tapped the envelope and regarded them-

"Now I" said he. "What do you think
I have to tell you?"

"Something nice," Ina was sure.

"Something surprising," Dwight said
portentously.

"But, Dwight — is it nice?" from his Ina.

"That depends. I hke it. So'il Lulu."
He leered at her. "It's company,"

"Oh, Dwight," said Ina. "Who?"

"From Oregon," he said, toying with his
suspense.

"Your brother 1" cried Ina. "Is he can-
ing?"

"Yes. Ninian's coming, so he says."

"Ninianl" cried Ina again. She was ex-
cited, round-eyed, her moist lips parted.

Miss Lulu Bett

Dwight's brother Ninian. How long was
it? Nineteen years. South America, Cen-
tral America, Mexico, Panama "and all."
When was he coming and what was he com-
ing for?

"To see me," said Dwight. "To meet
you. Some day next week. He dcm't
know what a charmer Lulu is, or he'd come
quicker."

Lulu flushed terribly. Not from the im-
plication. But from the knowledge that
she was not a charmer.

The clock struck. The child Monona
uttered a cutting shriek. Herbert's eyes
flew not only to the child but to his wife.
What was this, was their progeny hurt?

"Bedtime," his wife elucidated, and
added: "Lulu, will you take her to bed?
I'm pretty tired."

Lulu rose and took Mraiona by the hand,
the child hanging back and shaking her
straight hair in an unconvincing negati'

As they crossed the room, I>wight
26

I
I

^ative. ^H
It Her. H

April

bert Deacon, strolling about and snapping
bis fingers, halted and cried out sharply:

"Lulu. One moment!"

He approached her. A finger was ex-
tended, his lips were parted, on his forehead
was a frown.

"You picked the flower on the plant?" he
asked incredulously.

Lulu made no reply. But the child
Monona felt herself lifted and borne to the
stairway and the door was shut with
■violence. On the dark stairway Lulu's
arms closed about her in an embrace which
left her breathless and squeaking. And yet
Lulu was not really fond of the child
Monona, either. This was a discharge of
emotion akin, say, to slamming the door.

MAY

^
^

LUIiU was dusting the parlour. The
parlour was rarely used, but every
morning it was dusted. By Lulu.

She dusted the black walnut centre table
which was of Ina's choosing, and looked
like Ina, shining, complacent, abundantly
cnired. The leather rocker, too, looked
Eke Ina, brown, plumply upholstered, tip-
ping back a bit. Really, the davenport
looked like Ina, for its chintx pattern
seemed to bear a design of lifted eyebrows
Mid arch, reproachful eyes.

Lulu dusted the upright piano, and that
was like Dwight — in a perpetual attitude
of rearing back, with paws out, playful,
hut capable, too, of roaring a ready bass.

And the black fii-eplace — there was Mrs.
Bett to the life. Colourless, fireless, and
with a dust of ashes.
81

Miss Liulu Bett

In the midst of all was Lulu herself re-
flected in the narrow pier glass, bodiless-
looking in her blue gingham gown, but
somehow alive. Natural. I

This pier glass Lulu approached with
expectation, not because of herself but be-
cause of the photograph on its low marble
shelf. A large photogi-apb on a little shelf-
easel. A photograph of a man with evident
eyes, evident lips, e\'ident cheeks — and each
of the six were rounded and convex. You
could construct the rest of him. Down
there under the glass you could imagine
him extending, rounded and convex, with
plump hands and curly thumbs and snug
clothes. It was Ninian Deacon, Dwight's . I
brother.

Every day since his coming had been
announced Lulu, dusting the parlour, had
seen the photograph looking at her with its
eyes somehow new. Or were her own eyes
new? She dusted this photograph with a
difiFerence, lifted, dusted, set it back, less
as a process than as an experience. As she

May

dusted the mirror and saw his trim sem-
blance over against her own bodiless reflec-
tion, she hurried away. But the eyes of
the picture followed her, and she liked it.

She dusted the south window-sill and saw
Bobby Larkin come round the house and
go to the wood-shed for the lawn mower.
She heard the smooth blur of the cutter.
Not six times had Bobby traversed the lawn
when Lulu saw Di emerge from the house.
Di had been caring for her canary and she
carried her bird-bath and went to the well,
and Lulu divined that Di had deliberately
disregarded the handy kitchen taps. Lulu
dusted the south window and watched, and
in her watching was no quality of spying
or of criticism. Nor did she watch wistfully.
Rather, she looked out on something in
which she had never shared, could not by
any chance imagine herself sharing.

The south windows were open. Airs of
May bore the soft talking.

"Oh, Bobby, will you pmnp while I hold
this?" And again: "Now wait tiU I rinse."

Miss Lulu Bett

And again: "You needn't be so glum" —
the village salutation signifying kindly at-
tenticHL

Bobby now first spoke: "Who's glum?"
he countered Roomily.

The iron of those days when she had
laughed at him was deep within him, and
this she now divined, and said absently:

"I used to think you were pretty nice.
But I don't like you any more."

"Yes, you used tol" Bobby repeated
derisively. "Is thai why you made fun of
me all the time?"

At this Di coloured and tapped her foot
on the well-curb. He seemed to have her
now, and enjoyed his triumph. But Di
looked up at him shyly and looked down.
"I had to," she admitted. "They were all
teasing me about you."

"They were?" This was a new thought
to him. Teasing her about him, were they
He straightened. "Huh!" 'he said,
magnificent evasion.

id, in ^1

May

"I had to make them stop, so I teased
you. I — I never wanted to." Again the
upward look,

"Weill" Bobhy stared at her. "I never
iiiought it was anything like that."

"Of course you didn't." She tossed back
her bright hair, met his eyes full, "And
yoa never came where I could tell you, I
wanted to tell you."

She ran into the house.

Lulu lowered her eyes. It was as if she
had witnessed the exercise of some secret
gift, had seen a cocoon open or an ^^^
hAtcfa. She was thinking:

"How easy she done it. Got him right
OTW. But Aow did she do that?"

Dusting the Dwight-Uke piano, Lulu
looked over-shoulder, with a manner of
speculation, at the photograph of Ninian.

Bobby mowed and pondered. The
magnificent conceit of the male in his under-
standing of the female character was suflft-
dently developed to cause him to welcome
85

Miss L/ulu Bett

the improvisation which he had just heard.
Perhaps that was the way it had been. Of
course that was the way it had been. What
a fool he had been not to understand. He
cast his eyes repeatedly toward the house.
He managed to make the job last over so
that he could return in the afternoon. He
was not conscious of planning this, but it
was in some manner contrived for him by
forces of his own with which he seemed to
be cooperating without his conscious will.
Continually he glanced toward the house.

These glances Lulu saw. She was a
woman of tliirty-four and Di and Bobby
were eighteen, hut Lulu felt for them no
adult indulgence. She felt that sweetness
of attention which we bestow upon May
robins. She felt more.

She cut a fresh cake, filled a plate, called
to Di, saying: "Take some out to that
Bobby Larkin, why don't you

It was Lulu's way of participating,
was her vicarious thrill.

,g. It M

May

After supper Dwight and Ina took their
books and departed to the Chautauqua Cir-
cle. To these meetings Lulu never went.
The reason seemed to be that she never
went anywhere.

When they were gone Lulu felt an in-
stant liberation. She turned aimlessly to
the garden and dug round things with her
finger. And she thought about the bright-
ness of that Chautauqua scene to which Ina
and Dwight had gone. Lulu thought about
8uch gatherings in somewhat the way that
a futurist receives the subjects of his art —
forms not vague, but heightened to intoler-
able definiteness, acute colour, and always
motion — ^motion as an integral part of the
desirable. But a factor of all was that Lulu
herself was the participant, not the on-
looker. The perfection of her dream was
not impaired by any longing. She had her
dream as a saint her sense of heaven.

"Luliel" her mother called. "You come
I out of that damp."

Miss Lulu Bett

She obeyed, as she had obeyed that voice
ali her life. But she took one last look
down the dim street. She had not known
it, but superimposed on her Chautauqua
thoughts had been her faint hope that it
would be to-night, while she was in the
garden alone, that Ninian Deacon would
arriye. And she had on her wool chally,
her coral beads, her cameo pin. . . .

She went into the lighted dining-room.
Monona was in bed. Di was not there.
■Mrs. Bett was in Dwight Herbert's leather
chair and she lolled at her ease. It was
strange to see this woman, usually so erect
and tense, now actually lolling, as if lolling
were the positive, the vital, and her ordi-
nary rigidity a negation of her. In seme
corresponding orgy of leisure and hbCTa-
tion, Lulu sat down with no needle.

"Inie ought to make over her delaine,"
Mrs. Bett comfortably began. They talked
of this, devised a mode, recalled other
delaines. "Dear, dear," said Mrs. Bett, 'T!
had on a delaine when I met your father."
3S

^V May

^^ She described it. Both women talked freely,
with animation. They were individuals and
ahve. To the two pallid beings accessory
to the Deacons' presence, Mrs. Bett and her
daughter Lulu now bore no relationship.
They emerged, had opinions, contradicted,
their eyes were bright.

Toward nine o'clock Mrs. Bett announced
that she thought she should have a lunch.
This was debauchery. She brought in bread-
and-butter, and a dish of cold canned peas.
She was committing all the excesses that
she knew — offering opinions, laughing, eat-
ing. It was to be seen that this woman
had an immense store of vitality, perpetual-
ly submerged.

When she had eaten she grew sleepy—'

rather cross at the last and inchned to hold

up her sister's excellencies to Lulu; and,

at Lulu's defence, lifted an ancient weapon.

il "What's the use of finding fault with

^^KXnie? Where'd you been if she hadn't

Miss Lulu Bett

"Well, I'm Bert's brother," said Ninian.
"So I can come in, can't I ?"

He did so, turned round like a dog be-
fore his chair and sat down heavily, forc-
ing his fingers through heavy, upspringing
brown hair.

"Oh, yes," said Lulu. "I'U call Ina.
She's asleep."

"Don't call her, then," said Ninian.
"Let's you and I get acquainted."

He said it absently, hardly looking at '
her.

"I'll get the pup a drink if you can spare
me a basin," he added.

Lulu brought the basin, and while he
went to tlie dog she ran tiptoeing to the
dining-room china closet and brought a cut-
glass tumbler, as heavy, as ungainly as a
stone crock. This she fiUed with milk.

"I thought maybe ..." said she, and
offered it.

"Thank yon!" said Ninian, and drained
it. "Making pies, as I live," he observed,
and brought his chair nearer to the table.

May

"I didn't know Ina had a sister," he went
on, "I remember now Bert said he had

two 'of her relatives "

Lulu flushed and glanced at hitn piti-

"He has," she said, "It's my mother
and me. But we do quite a good deal of
the work,"

"I'll bet you do," said Niniaii, and did
not perceive that anything had been
violated. "What's your name?" he he-
thought.

She was in an immense and obscure ex^
citement. Her manner was serene, her
hands as they went on v^fith the peeling did
not tremble; her replies were given with
sufficient quiet. But she told liim her name
as one teUs sometliing of another and more
TMnote creature. She felt as one may feel
in catastrophe— no sharp understanding but
merely the sense that the thing cannot pos-
sibly be happening.

"You folks expect me?" he went on.

"Oh, yes," she cried, almost with
43

Miss Lulu Bett

vehemence. "Why, we've looked for you
every day."

" 'See," he said, "how long have they
been married?"

Lulu flushed as she answered: "Fifteen
yeaxs."

"And a year before that the first one
died — and two years they were married,"
he computed. "I never met that one. Then
it's close to twenty years since Bert and I
have seen each other."

"How awful," Lulu said, and flushed
again.

"Why?"

"To be that long away from your folks."

Suddenly she found herself facing this
honestly, as if the immensity of her pres-
ent experience were clarifying her under-
standing: Would it be so awful to be
away from Bert and Monona and Di — ^yes,
and Ina, for twenty years?

"You think that?" he laughed. "A man
don't know what he's like till he's roamed
around on his own." He liked the sound

I
I

May

of it. "Roamed around on his own," he
repeated, and laughed again. "Course a
woman don't know that."

"Why don't she?" asked Lulu. She bal-
anced a pie on her hand and carved the
crust. She was stupefied to hear her own
question. "Why don't she?"

"Maybe she does. Do you?"

"Yes," said Lulu.

"Good enough 1" He applauded noise-
lessly, with fat hands. His diamond ring
sparkled, his even white teeth flashed. "I've
had twenty years of galloping about," he
informed her, unable, after all, to transfer
his interests from himself to her.

"Where?" she asked, although she knew.

"South America, Central America.
Mexico. Panama." He searched his mem-
ory. "Colombo," he superadded.

"Myl" said Lulu. She had probably
never in her life had the least desire to see
any of these places. She did not want to
see them now. But she wanted passionate-
ly to meet her companion's mind.
45

Miss Lulu Belt

"It's the life," he informed her.

"Must be," Lulu breathed. "I " she

tried, and gave it up.

"Where you been mostly?" he asked at
last.

By this unprecedented interest in her do-
ings she was thrown into a passion of ex*
citement.

"Here," she said. "I've always been
here. Fifteen years with Ina. Before that
we hved in the country."

He listened sjinpathetically now, his
head well on one side. He watched her
veined hands pinch at the pies. "Poor old
girl," he was thinking.

"Is it Miss Lulu Bett?" he abruptly in-
quired. "Or Mrs.?"

Lulu flushed in anguish.

"Miss," she said low, as one who con-
fesses the extremity of failure. Then from
unplumbed depths another Lulu abruptly
spoke up. "From choice," she said.

He shouted with laughter.

"You betl Oh, you bet!" he cried,
46

I
I

May

"Never doubted it." He made his palms
taut and drummed on the table. "Say!"
be said.

Lulu glowed, quickened, smiled. Her
face was another face.

"Which kind of a Mr. are you?" she
heard herself ask, and his shoutings re-
doubled. Well! Who would have thought
it of her?

"Never give myself away," he assured
her. "Say, by George, I never thought of
that before! There's no telling whether a
man's married or not, by his name!"

"It don't matter," said Lulu.

"Why not?"

"Not so many people want to know."

Again he laughed. This laughter was in-
toxicating to Lulu. No one ever laughed
at what she said save Herbert, who laughed
o-ther. "Go it, old girl!" Ninian was think-
ing, but this did not appear.

The child Monona now arrived, banging
the front gate and hurling herself roimd
the house on the board walk, catching the
47

Miss LmIu Bett

toe of one foot in the heel of the other
and blundering forward, head down, her
short, straight hair flapping over her face.
She landed flat-footed on the porch. She
began to speak, using a ridiculous perver-
sion of words, scarcely articulate, tiien in
vogue in her group. And,

"^Vhose dog?" she shrieked.

Ninian looked over his shoulder, held out
his hand, finished something that he yfos
saying to Lulu. Monona came to him
readily enough, staring, loose-Upped.

"I'll bet I'm your uncle," said Ninian.

Relationship being her highest known
form of romance, Monona was thrilled by
this intelligence.

"Give us a kiss," said Ninian, finding in
the plural some vague mitigation for some
vague offence.

Monona, looking silly, complied. And
her uncle said my stars, such a great big
tall girl — they would have to put a board
on her head.

May

"What's that?" inquired Monona. She
had spied his great diamond ring.

"This," said her uncle, "was brought to
me by Santa Claus, who keeps a jewellery
shop in heaven."

The precision and speed of his improvisa-
tion revealed him. He had twenty other
diamonds like this one. He kept them for
those Sundays when tJie sun comes up in
the west. Of course — often! Some day he
was going to melt a diamond and eat it.
Then you sparkled all over in the dark,
ever after. Another diamond he was go-
ing to plant. They say He did it all

gravely, absorbedly. About it he was as
conscienceless as a savage. This was no
fancy spun to pleasure a child. This was
like lying, for its own sake.

He went on talking with Lulu, and now
again he was the tease, the braggart, the
unbridled, unmodified male.

Monona stood in the circle of his arm.
The little being was attentive, softened,
subdued. Some pretty, faint light visited
49

Miss Lulu Bett

her. In her listening look, she showed her-
self a charming child.

"It strikes me," said Ninian to Lulu,
"that you're going to do something mi^ty
interesting before you die."

It was the clear conversational impulse,
bom of the need to keep something goin^
but Lulu was all faith.

She closed the oven door on her pies and
stood brushing flour from her fingers. He
was looking away from her, and she looked
at him. He was completely like his pic-
ture. She felt as if she were looking at
his picture and she was abashed and turned
away.

"Well, I hope so," she said, which had
certainly never been true, for her old form-
less dreams were no intention — nothing but
a mush of discontent. "I hope I can do
something that's nice before I quit," she
said. Nor was this hope now independently
true, but only this surprising longing to ap-
pear interesting in liis eyes. To dance be-
fore him. "What would the folks think of
50

May

me, going on so?" she suddenly said. Her
mild sense of disloyalty was delicious. So
was his understanding glance.

"You're the stuflf," he remarked absently.

She laughed happily.

The door opened. Ina appeared.

"Weill" said Ina. It was her remotest
tone. She took this man to be a pedlar,
beheld her child in his clasp, made a quick,
forward step, chin lifted. She had time for
a very javehn of a look at Lulu.

"Hello 1" said Ninian. He had the one
formula. "I believe I'm your husband's
brother. Ain't this Ina?"

It had not crossed the mind of Lulu to
present him.

Beautiful it was to see Ina relax, soften,
warm, transform, humanise. It gave one
hope for the whole species.

"Ninianl" she cried. She lent a faint im-
pression of the double c to the initial vowel.
She slurred the rest, until the y sound
squinted in. Not Neenyun, hut nearly

IllfV Neenyun.

Miss Lulu Bett

He kissed her.

"Since Dwight isn't lierel" she cried, and
shook her finger at him. Ina's conception
of hostess-ship was definite: A volley of
questions— was his train on time? He had
found the house all right? Of coursel Any
one could direct him, she should hope. And
he hadn't seen Dwight? She must tele-
phone him. But then she arrested herself
with a sharp, curved fling of her starched
skirts. Jvo! They would surprise him at
tea — she stood taut, lips compressed. Oh,
the Plows were coming to tea. How un-
fortunate, she thought. How fortunate,
she said.

The child Monona made her knees and
elbows stiff and danced up and down. She
must, she must participate.

"Aunt Lulu made three pies!" she
screamed, and shook her straight hair.

"Gracious sakes," said Kinian. "I
brought her a pup, and if I didn't forget
to give it to her."

They adjourned to the porch — Ninian,

May

Ina, Monona. The puppy was presented,
and yawned. The party kept on about
"the place." Ina dehghtedly exhibited the
tomatoes, the two apple trees, the new
shed, the bird bath. Ninian said the un-
spellable "m — m," rising inflection, and
the "I see," prolonging the verb as was
expected of him. Ina said that tliey meant
to build a sunmier-house, only, dear me,
when you have a family — but there, he
didn't know anjiihing about that. Ina was
using her eyes, she was arch, she was
coquettish, she was flirtatious, and she be-
lieved herself to be merely matronly, sister-
ly, womanly . . .

She screamed. Dwight was at the gate.
Now the meeting, exclamation, banality,
guffaw . . . good will.

And Lulu, peeping through the blind.

When "tea" had been experienced that
evening, it was found that a light rain was
falling and the Deacons and their guests,
S3

Miss Lulu Bett

the Plows, were constrained to remain in
the parlour. The Plows were gentle, faint-
ly lustrous folt, sketched into life rather
hghtly, as if they were, say, looking in from
some other level.

"The only thing," said Dwight Herbert,
"that reconciles me to rain is that I'm let
off croquet." He rolled his r's, a favourite
device of his to induce humour. He called
it "croquette." He had never been more
irrepressible. The advent of bis brother
was partly accountable, the need to show
himself a fine family man and host in a
prosperous little home — simple and pathetic
desire.

"Tell you what we'll do I" said Dwight.
"Nin and I'll reminisce a little."

"Do 1" cried Mr. Plow. This gentle fel-
low was always excited by life, so faintly
excited by him, and enjoyed its presenta-
tion in any real form.

Ninian had unerringly selected a dwarf
rocker, and he was overflowing it and
ing.

1
I

id rock- ^1

May

"Take this chair, do!" Ina begged. "A
big chair for a big man." She spoke as if
be were about the age of Monona.

Ninian refused, insisted on his refusal.
A few years more, and human relationships
would have spread sanity even to Ina's
estate and she would have told him why
he should exchange chairs. As it was she
forbore, and kept glancing anxiously at
the over-burdened Httle beast beneath bun.
The child !Monona entered the room. She
had been driven down by Di and Jenny
Plow, who had vanished upstairs and,
through the ventilator, might be heard in
a lift and fall of giggling. Jlonona had
I also- been driven from the kitchen where
' Lulu was, for some reason, hurrying
through the dishes. Monona now ran to
Mrs. Bett, stood beside her and stared
about resentfully. Mrs. Bett was in best
black and ruches, and die seized upon
Slonona and patted her, as her own form
of social expression; and MoncMm wriggled
I like a puppy, as hers.

Miss Lulu Bett

"Quiet, pettie," said Ina, eyebrows up.
She caught her lower lip in her teeth.

"Well, sir," said Dwight, "you wouldn't
think it to look at us, but mother had her
hands pretty full, bringing us up."

Into Dwight's face came another look.
It was always so, when he spoke of this
foster-mother who had taken these two boys
and seen them through the graded schools.
This woman Dwight adored, and when he
spoke of her he became his inner self.

"We must run up-state and see her while
you're here, Nin," he said.

To this Ninian gave a casual assent, lack-
ing his brother's really tender ardour.

"Little," Dwight pursued, "little did she
think I'd settle down into a nice, quiet, mar-
ried dentist and magistrate in my town.
And Nin into — say, Nin, what are you,
anj-way?"

They laughed.

"That's the question," said Ninian.

They laughed,

"Maybe," Ina ventured, "maybe Ninian' J

May

■will tell us something about his travels. He
is quite a traveller, you know," she said to
the Plows. "A regular Gulliver."

They laughed respectfully.

"How we should love it, Mr. Deacon,"
Mrs. Plow said. "You know we've never
seen very much."

Goaded on, Ninian launched upon his
foreign countries as he had seen them:
Population, exports, imports, soil, irriga-
tion, business. For the populations Ninian
had no respect. Crops could not touch ours.
Soil mighty poor pickings. And the busi-
ness — say! Those fellows don't know —
and, say, the hotels 1 Don't say foreign
hotel to Ninian.

He regarded all the alien earth as bar-
barian, and he stoned it. He was equipped
for absolutely no intensive observaticoL His
contacts were negligible. Mrs. Plow was
more excited by the Deacons' party than
Kinian had been wrought upon by all his
Toyaging.

"Tell fcm,** said Dwi^t. "Wbem we raa
67

Miss LmIu Bett

away that time and went to the state fair,

little did we think " He told about

running away to the state fair. "I thought,"
he wound up, irrelevantly, "Ina and I might
get over to the other side this year, but I
guess not. I guess not."

The words give no conception of their
effect, spoken thus. For there in Warble-
ton these words are not commonplace. In
Warbleton, Europe is never so casually
spoken. "Take a trip abroad" is the phrase,
or "Go to Europe" at the very least, and
, both with empressement. Dwight had some-
/ where noted and dehberately picked up
' that "other side" effect, and bis Ina knew
this, and was proud. Her covert glance
about pensively covered her soft triumph.

Mrs. Bett, her arm still circling the child
Monona, now made her first observation.

"Pity not to have went while the going
was good," she said, and said no more.

Nobody knew quite what she meant, and
everybody hoped for the best. But Ina
frowned. Mamma did these things occasion-

^^ i\ oooay

^H everybody

^H frowned. IVl

Map

ally when there was company, and she
dared. She never sauced Dwight in private.

And it wasn't fair, it wasn't jair

Abruptly NJnian rose and left the room.

The 3ishes were washed. Lulu had
washed them at break-neck speed — she
could not, or would not, have told why.
But no sooner were they finished and set
sway than Lulu had been attacked by an
unconquerable inhibition. And instead of
going to the parlour, she sat down by the
kitchen window. She was in her chally
gown, with her cameo pin and her string
of coral.

Laughter from the parlour mingled with
the laughter of Di and Jenny upstairs.
Lulu was now rather shy of Di. A night
or two before, coming home with "extra"
CTeam, she had gone round to the side-door
and had come full upon Di and Bobby,
seated on the steps. And Di was saying:

"Well, if I marry you, you've simply
59

Miss Lulu Bett

got to be a great man. I could never
marry just anybody. I'd smother."

Lulu had heard, stricken. She passed
them by, responding only faintly to their
greeting. Di was far less taken aback than
Lulu.

Later Di had said to Lulu: "I s'pose
you heard what we were saying."

Lulu, much shaken, had withdrawn from
the whole matter by a fiat "no." "Because,"
she said to herself, "I couldn't have heard
right."

But since then she had looked at Di as
if Di were some one else. Had not Lulu
taught her to make buttonholes and to hem
— oh, nol Lulu could not have heard prop-
erly.

"Everybody's got somebody to be nice
to them," she thought now, sitting by the
kitchen window, adult yet Cinderella.

She thought that some one would ccane
for her. Her mother or even Ina. Per-
haps Maty would send Monona. She waited
60

I
I

May

at first hopefully, then resentfully. The
grey rain wrapped the air.

"Nobody cares what becomes of me after
they're fed," she thought, and derived an
obscure satisfaction from her phrasing, and
thought it again.

Ninian Deacon came into the kitchen.

Her first impression was that he had
come to see whether the dog had been fed.

"I fed him," she said, and wished that
she had been busy when Ninian entered.

"Who, me?" he asked. "You did that
all right. Say, why in time don't you oome
in the other room?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Well, neither do I. IVe kept think-
ing, *Why don't she come along.' Then I
remembered the dishes." He glanced about.
"I come to help wipe dishes."

"Oh I" she laughed so delicately, so de-
lightfully, one wondered where she got it.

"They're washed " she caught herself

at 'long ago."

"Well then, what are you doing here?"

Miss Lulu Belt

*'Kesting."

'*Best in there." He bowed, crooked his
aKEU "Senora," he said, — his Spanish
matched his other assimilations of travel —
"Senora. Allow me."

Lulu rose. On his arm she entered the
parlour. Dwight was narrating and did not
observe that entrance. To the Plows it was
sufficiently normal. But Ina looked up and
said:

"Weill" — in two notes, descending, curv-
ing.

Lulu did not look at her. Lulu sat in a
low rocker. Her starched white skirt,
throwing her chally in ugly lines, revealed
a peeping rim of white embroidery. Her
lace front wrinkled when she sat, and per-
petually she adjusted it. She curled her
feet sidewise beneath her chair, her long
wrists and veined hands lay along her lap
in no relation to her. She was tense. She
rocked.

When Dwight had finished his narration.
62

May

tiiere was a pause, broken at last by Mrs.
Bett:

"You tell ttiat better than you used to
when you started in telling it," she observed.
"You got in some things I guess you used
to clean forget about. Monona, get off
my rocker."

Monona made a little whimpering sound,
in pretence to tears. Ina said "Darling —
quiet!" — chin a little lifted, lower hp re-
Tealing lower teeth for the word's com-
pletion; and she held it.

The Plows were asking something about
Mexico. Dwight was wondering if it would
let up raining at all. Di and Jenny came
whispering into the room. But all these
distractions Ninian Deacon swept aside.

"Miss Lulu," he said, "I wanted you to
hear about my trip up the Amazon, be-
cause I knew how inter-ested you are in
travels."

He talked, according to his lights, about
the Amazon. But the person who most
enjoyed the recital could not afterward

Miss Lulu Bett

have told two words that he said. Lulu
kept the position which she had taken at
first, and she dare not change. She saw
the blood in the veins of her hands and
wanted to hide them. She wondered if she
might fold her arras, or have one hand to
support her chin, gave it all up and sat
motionless, save for the rocking.

Then she forgot everything. For the
first time in years some one was talking
and looking not only at Ina and Dwight
and their guests, but at her.

T ^^

Ill

JUNE

OIV a June morning Dwight Herbert
Deacon looked at the sky, and said
with his manner of originating it:
"How about a picnic this afternoon?"
Ina, with her blank, upward look, ex-
claimed: "To-day f

"First class day, it looks like to me."
Come to think of it, Ina didn't know that
tliere was anything to prevent, but mercy,
Herbert was so sudden. Lulu began to
recite the resources of the house for a lunch.
Meanwhile, since the first mention of picnie,
the child Monona had been dancing stiffly
about the room, knees stiff, elbows stiff,
shoulders immovable, her straight hair flap-
ping about her face. The sad dance of the
child who cannot dance because she never
has danced. Di gave a conservative assent
67

Miss Lulu Bett

-she was at that

age

-and then took ad-

vantage of the family softness incident to a
guest and demanded that Bobby go too
Ina hesitated, partly because she always
hesitated, partly because she was tribal in
the extreme. "Just our httle famUy and
Uncle Ninian would have been so nice," she
sighed, with her consent.

When, at six o'clock, Ina and Dwight
and Ninian assembled on the pordi and
Lulu came out with tlie basket, it was seen
that she was in a blue-cotton house-gown.

"Look here," said Ninian, "aren't you
going?"

"Me?" said Lulu. "Oh, no."

"Why not?"

"Oh, I haven't been to a picnic since I
can remember."

"But why not?"

"Oh, I never think of such a tMng."

Ninian waited for the family to speak.
They did speak. Dwight said:

"Lulu's a regular home body."

June

And Ina advanced kindly with: "Come
with us, Lulu, if you like."

"No," said Lulu, and flushed. "Thank
jcm" she added, formally.

Mrs. Bett's voice shrilled from within the
bouse, startlingly close — just heyond the
hlind, in fact:

"Go on, Luhe. It'll do you good. You
mind me and go on."

"Well," said Ninian, "that's what I say.
You hustle for your hat and you come
along."

For the first time this course presented
itself to Lulu as a possibUity. She stared
up at Ninian.

"You can slip on my linen duster, over,"
Ina said graciously.

"Your new one?" Dwight incredulously
wished to know.

"Oh, no!" Ina laughed at the idea. "The
old coe."

They were having to wait few Di in any
(Sise — they always had to wait for Di — and
at last, hardly believing in hiex own iiKitions,

I I at lasb, naru

Miss Lulu Bett

Lula was running to make ready. Mrs.
Bett hurried to help her, but she took down
the wrong things and they were both irri-
tated. Lulu reappeared in tlie linen duster
and a wide hat. There had been no time
to "tighten up" her hair; she was flushed
at the adventure; she had never looked ao
well.

They started. Lulu, falling in witii
Monona, heard for the fii'st time in her
life, the step of the pursuing male, choos-
ing to walk beside her and the little girl.
Oh, would Ina like that? And what did
Lulu care what Ina liked? Monona, mak-
ing a silly, semi-articulate observation, was
enchanted to have Lulu burst into laughter
and squeeze her hand.

Di contributed her bright presence, and
Bobby Larkin appeared from nowhere, run-
ning', with a gigantic bag of fruit.

"Bullylujahl" he shouted, and Lulu could
have shouted with him.

She sought for some utterance. Sha
wanted to talk with Ninian.
70

JuTie

"I do hope we've brought sandwiches
enough," was all that she could get to say.

They chose a spot, that is to say Dwight
Herbert chose a spot, across the river and
up the shore where there was at that season
a strip of warm beach. Dwight Herbert
declared himself the builder of incomparable
fires, and made a bad smudge. Ninian, who
was a camper neither by birth nor by
adoption, kept offering brightly to help,
could think of nothing to do, and presently,
bethinking himself of skipping stones, went
and tried to skip them on the flowing river.
Ina cut her hand opening the condensed
milk and was obliged to sit under a tree
and nurse the wound. Monona spilled aU
the salt and sought diligently to recover it.
So Lulu did all the work. As for Di and
Bobby, they had taken the pail and gone
for water, discouraging Monona from ac-
companying them, discouraging her to the
point of tears. But the two were gom for
so long that on their return Dwight was
hungry and cross and majestic.
71

Miss Lulu Bett

"Those who disregard the comfort of
other people," he enunciated, "can not ex-
pect consideration for themselves in the
future."

He did not say on what ethical tenet this
dictum was based, but he delivered it witli
extreme authority. Ina caught her lower
lip with her teeth, dipped her head, and
looked at Di. And Monona laughed like
a little demon.

As soon as Lulu bad all in readiness, and
cold corned beef and salad had begun their
orderly progression, Dwight became the im-
memorial dweller in green fastnesses. He
began:

"This is ideal. I tell you, people don't
half know life if they don't get out and
eat in the open. It's better than any tonic
at a dollar the bottle. Nature's tonic —
eb? Free as the air. Look at that sky.
See that water. Could anything be mtwe
pleasant?"

He smiled at his wife. This man's face
was glowing with simple pleasure. He loved
72

■

June

the out-of-doors with a love which could
not explain itself. But he now lost a
definite climax when his wife's comment
was heard to be:

"Monona! Now it's all over both ruffles.
And mamma does try so hard ..."

After supper some boys arrived with a
boat which they beached, and Dwight, with
enthusiasm, gave the boys ten cents for a
half hour's use of that boat and invited
to the waters his wife, his brother and his
younger daughter. Ina was timid — not be-
cause she was afraid but because she was
congenitally timid— with her this was not a
belief or an emotion, it was a disease.

"Dwight darling, are you sure there's no
danger?"
I Why, ntme. None in the world. Who-
' ever heard of drowning in a river.

"But you're not so very used "

Oh, wasn't he? Who was it that had
lived in a boat throughout youth if not he?

Ninian refused out-of-hand, lighted a
cignr. sad sat on a log in a permanent
7«

Miss Lulu Bett

fashion. Ina's plump figure was fitted in
the stern, the child Monona affixed, and
the boat put off, how well out of water.
On this pleasure ride the face of the wife
was as the face of the damned. It was
true that she revered her husband's opinions
above those of all other men. In pohtics,
in science, in religion, in dentistry she
looked up to his dicta as to revelation. And
was he not a magistrate? But let him take
oars in hand, or shake lines or a whip above
the back of any horse, and this woman
would trust any other woman's husband by
preference. It was a phenomenon.

Lulu was making the work last, so that
she should be out of everybody's way.
When the boat put off without Ninian, she
felt a kind of terror and wished that he
had gone. He had sat down near her, and
she pretended not to see. At last Lulu
understood that Ninian was deliberately
choosing to remain with her. The languor
of his bulk after the evening meal made
74

I
I

June

no explanation for Lulu. She asked for no
explanation. He had stayed.

And they were alone. For Di, on a
pretext of examining the flocks and herds,
was leading Bobby away to the pastures,
a little at a time.

The sun, now fallen, had left an even,
waxen sky. Leaves and ferns appeared
drenched with the light just withdrawn.
The hush, the warmth, the colour, were
charged with some influence. The air of
the time communicated itself to Lulu as
intense and quiet happiness. She had not
yet felt quiet with Ninian, For the first
time her blind excitement in his presence
ceased, and she felt curiously accustomed
to him. To him the air of the time im-
parted itself in a deepening of his facile
sympathy.

"Do you know something?" he began.
"I think you have it pretty hard around
here."

"I?" Lulu was genuinely astonished.

**S^es, sir. Do you have to work like this

Miss Lulu Bett

all the time? I guess you won't mind my
asking."

"Well, I ought to work. I have a home
with them. Mother too."

"Yes, but glory. You ought to have
some kind of a life of your own. You want
it, too. You told me you did — that first
day."

She was silent. Again he was investing
her with a longing which she had never
really had, until he had planted that long-
ing. She had wanted she knew not what.
Now she accepted the dim, the romantic
interest of this role.

"I guess you don't see how it seeans,"
he said, "to me, coming along — a stranger
so. I don't like it."

He frowned, regarded the river, flicked
away ashes, his diamond obediently shining.
Lulu's look, her head drooping, had the
liquid air of the look of a young girl. For
the first time in her life she was feeling
her helplessness. It intoxicated her.

"They're very good to me," she said.
76

I
I

June

He turned. "Do you know why you
think that? Because you've never had any-
body really good to you. That's why."

"But they treat me good."

"They make a slave of you. Regular
slave." He puffed, frowning. "Damned
shame, / call it," he said.

Her loyalty stirred Lulu. "We bare
our whole living "

"And you earn it. I been watdiing you
since I been here. Don't you ever go any-
wheres?"

She said: "This is the first place in — ^in
years."

"Lord. Don't you want to? Of course
you dol*'

"Not so much places like this "

"I see. What you want is to get away
— ^fike you'd ought to." He regarded her.
"You've been a blamed fine-looking
woman," he said.

She did not flush, but that faint, unsus-
pected Lulu spoke for her:
77

Miss Lulu Bett

up what's good. You tell me just what
yoa like to eat, and we'll get it "

She said: "I haven't had anything to
eat in years that I haven't cooked myself."

He planned for that time to come, and
Lulu Ustened as one intensely experiencing
every word that he uttered. Yet it was
not in that future merrj'-making that she
found her joy, hut in the consciousness that
he — scane one — any one — was planning libe
this for her.

Meanwhile Di and Bobhy had rounded
the (MHTier by an old hop-house and kept
on down the levee. Now that the presence
of the others was withdrai^Ti, the two looked
about them differently and began them-
selves to give off an influence instead of
being pressed upon by overpowering per-
sonalities. Frogs were chorusing in the
near swamp, and Bobhy wanted one. He
was off after it. But Di eventually drew
him hack, reluctant, frogless. He entered
upon an exhaustive account of the
frogs for bait, and as he talked he

use of ^H
he ccm- ^H

June

stantly flung stones. Di grew restless.
There was, she had found, a certain amount
of this to he gone through before Bobby
would focus on the personal. At length
she was obliged to say, "Like me to-day?"
And then he entered upon personal talk
with the same zest with which he had dis-
cussed bait.

*'Bobby," said Di, ''sometimes I think
we might he married, and not wait for any
old money."

They had now come that far. It was
partly an authentic attraction, grown from
out the old repulsion, and partly it was
that they both — and especially Di — so much
wanted the experiences of attraction that
they assumed its ways. And then eadi
cared enough to assume the pretty role re-
quired by the other, and by the occasion,
and by the air of the time.

"Would you?" asked Bobby — but in tiie
subjunctive.

She said: "Yes. I wilL'*
81

Miss Lulu Bett

"It would mean running away, wouldn't
it?" said Bobby, still subjunctive.

"I suppose so. Mamma and papa are so
tmreasonable."

"Di," said Bobby, "I don't believe you
could ever be happy with me."

"The ideal I can too. You're going to
be a great man — you know you are."

Bobby was silent. Of course he knew it
— but he passed it over.

"Wouldn't it be fun to elope and sur-
prise the whole school?" said Di, sparkling.

Bobby grinned appreciatively. He was
good to look at, with his big frame, his head
of rough dark hair, the sky warm upon his
clear skin and full mouth, Di suddenly an-
nounced that she would be wiUing to elope
now.

"I've planned eloping lots of times," ^
said ambiguously.

It flashed across the mind of Bobby that
in these plans of hers he may not always
have been the principal, and he could not

June

be sure . . . But she talked in nothings,
and he answered her so.

Soft cries sounded in the centre of the
stream. The boat, well out of the strong
current, was seen to have its oars shipped;
and there sat Dwight Herbert gently rock-
ing the boat. Dwight Herbert would.

"Bertie, Bertie — ^please 1" you heard his
Ina say.

Monona began to cry, and her father
was irritated, felt that it would be ignomini-
ous to desist, and did not know that he felt
this. But he knew that he was annoyed,
and he took refuge in this, and picked up
the oars with: "Some folks never can ai-
joy anything without spoiling it."

"That's what I was thinking," said Ina,
■with a flash of anger.

They glided toward the shore in a huff.
Monona found that she enjoyed crying
across the water and kept it up. It was
almost as good as an echo. Ina, stepping
safe to the sands, cried ungratefully that
this was the last time that she would ever,
83

^K safe to 1
^H tibis was

Miss Lulu Beit

ever go with her husband anywhere. Ever.
Dwiglit Herbert, recovering, gauged the
moment to require of him humour, and
observed that his wedded wife was as
skittish as a colt. Ina kept silence, head
poised so that her full little chin showed
double. Monona, who had previously
hidden a cooky in her frock, now remem-
bered it and crunched sidewise, the eyes
ruminant.

Moving toward them, with Di, Bobby
was suddenly overtaken by the sense of dis-
liking them all. He never had liked Dwight
Herbert, his employer. Mrs. Deacon
seemed to him so overwhelmingly mature
that he had no idea how to treat her. And
the child Monona he would hke to roll in
the river. Even Di . . . He fell silent, was
silent on the walk home which was the
signal for Di to tease him steadily. The
little being was afraid of silence. It was
too vast for her. She was hke a butterfly
in a dome.

But against that background of ruined

ruined ^H

JuTie

occasion. Lulu walked homeward beside
Ninian. And all that night, beside her
mother who groaned in her sleep. Lulu lay-
tense and awake. He had walked home
with her. He had told Ina and Herbert
about going to the city. What did it mean?
Suppose . . . oh no; oh no!

"Either lay still or get up and set up,"
Mrs. Bett directed her at length.

JULY

IVj

WHEN, on a warm evening a fort-
night later, Lulu descended the
stairs dressed for her incredible trip
to the city, she wore the white waist which
abe had often thought they would "use"
for her if she died. And really, the waist
looked as if it had been planned for the
purpose, and its wide, upstanding plaited
lace at throat and wrist made her neck look
thinner, her forearm sharp and veined.
Her hair she had "crimped" and parted in
the middle, puif ed high — it was so that hair
had been worn in Lulu's girlhood.

"Well!" said Ina, when she saw this
coiflfure, and frankly examined it, head well
back, tongue meditatively teasing at her
lower Up.

Miss L/ulu Bett

Ninian made a great show of selecting a
table, changed once, called the waiter "my
man" and rubbed soft hands on "What do
you say? Shall it be lobster?" He ordered
the dinner, instructing the waiter mtb
painstaking gruffness.

"Not that they can touch your cooking
here. Miss Lulu," he said, settling h'my^f
to wait, and crumbling a crust,

Dwight, expanding a bit in the aura of
the food, observed that Lulu was a regular
chef, that was what Lulu was. He still
would not look at his wife, irflo now re-
marked:

''SheflF, Dwightie. Not cheff."

This was a mean advantage, whidi he
pretended not to hear — another meui ad-
vantage.

"Ina," said Lulu, 'Your hat's just a
little mite — no, over tiie other way."

"Was there anything to prevent your
speaking of that before?" Ina inquired
acidly.

July

"I started to and then somebody always
said something," said Lulu humbly.

Nothing could so much as cloud Lulu's
hour. She was proof against any shadow.

"Say, but you look tremendous to-night,"
Dwight observed to her.

Understanding perfectly that this was
said tc tease his wife, Lulu yet flushed witU
pleasure. She saw two women watching,
and she thought: "They're feeling sorry
for Ina — nobody talking to her." She
laughed at everything that the men said.
She passionately wanted to talk herself.
"How many folks keep going past," she
said, many times.

At length, having noted the details of
all the clothes in range, Ina's isolation
palled upon her and she set herself to take
Ninian's attention. She therefore talked
with him about himself.

"Curious you've never married, Nin,"
she said.

"Don't say it like that," he begged. "I

might yet."

Miss L/iUu Bett

Ina laughed enjoyably. "Yes, you
might I" she met thu.

"She wants everybody to get married,
but she wishes I hadn't," Dwight threw
in with exceeding rancour.

They developed tliis theme exhaustively,
Dwight usually speaking in the third per-
son and always with his shoulder turned a
bit from his wife. It was inconceivable, the
gusto with which they proceeded. Ina had
assumed for the purpose an air distrait,
casual, attentive to the scene about them.
But graduaUy her cheeks began to bum.

"She'll crj'," Lulu thought in alarm,
and said at random: "Ina, that hat is so
pretty — ever so much prettier than the old
one." But Ina said frostily that she never
saw anything the matter with the old one.

"Let us talk," said Ninian low, to Lulu,
"Then they'll simmer down."

He went on, in an undertone, about
nothing in particular. Lulu hardly heard
what he said, it was so pleasant to have
him talking to her in this confidential

July

fashion; and she was pleasantly aware that
his manner was open to misinterpretation.
In the nick of time, the lobster was served.

Dinner and the play — the show, as
Ninian called it. This show was "Peter
Pan," chosen by Ninian because the seats
cost the most of those at any theatre. It
was almost indecent to see how Dwight Her-
bert, the immortal soul, had warmed and
melted at these contacts. By the time that
all was over, and they were at the hotel for
supper, such was his pleasurable excitation
that he was once more playful, teasing, once
more the irrepressible. But now his Ina
was to be won back, made it evident that
she was not one lightly to overlook, and a
fine firmness sat upon the Uttle doubling /r
dun.

They discussed the play. Not one of
them had understood the story. The dog-
kennel part — wasn't that the queerest thing?
Nothing to do with the rest of the play.
95

Miss Lvlu Bett

"I was for the pirates. The one with
the book — he was my style," said Dwight.

"WeU, there it is again," Ina cried.
"They didn't belwig to the real play,
either."

"Oh, well," Ninian said, "they have to
put in parts, I suppose, to catch everybody.
Instead of a song and dance, they do that."

"And I didn't understand," said Ina,
"why they all clapped when the princip^
character ran down front and said some-
thing to the audience that time. But they
aU did."

Ninian thou^t this might have been out
of compliment. Ina wished that Monona
might have seen, confessed that the last part
was so pretty that she herself would not
look; and into Ina's eyes came their love-
liest light.

Lulu sat there, bearing the talk about
the play. "Why couldn't I have said that?"
she thought as the others spoke. All that
they said seemed to her apropos, but she
could think of nothing to add. The eve-

July

ning had been to her a light from heaven
— ^how could she find anything to say ? She
sat in a daze of happiness, her mind hardly
operative, her look moving from one to an-
other. At last Ninian looked at her.

"Sure you liked it. Miss Lulu?"

"Oh, yes! I think they all took their
parts real well."

It was not enough. She looted at them
ajjpealingly, knowing that she had not said
enough.

"You could hear everything they said,"

^e added. "It was " she dwindled to

silence.

Dwight Herbert savoured his rarebit
with a great show of long wrinkled dimples.

"Excellent sauces they make here — ex-
cellent," he said, with the frown of an
epicure. "A tiny wee bit more Athabasca,"
he added, and they all laughed and told
him that Athabasca was a lake, of course.
Of course he meant tobasco, Ina said. Their
entertainment and their talk was of this
sort, for an hour.

Miss Lulu Bett

"Well, now," said Dwight Herbert when
it was finished, "somebody dance on the
table."

"Dwightiel"

"Got to amuse ourselves somehow. Come,
liven up. They'll begin to read the funeral
service over us."

"Why not say the wedding service?"
asked Ninian.

In the mention of wedlock there was al-
ways something stimulating to Dwight,
something of overwhelming humour. He
shouted a derisive endorsement of this pro-

"I shouldn't object," said Ninian.
"Should you. Miss Lulu?"

Lulu now burned the slow red of her
torture. They were all looking at her.
She made an anguished effort to defend
herself.

*'I don't know it," she said, "so I can't
say it."

Ninian leaned toward her.

"I, Ninian, take thee. Lulu, to be xof

July

wedded wife," he pronounced. "That's the
way it goes !"

"Lulu daren't say itl" cried Dwight. He
laughed so loudly that those at the near
tables turned. And, from the fastness of
her wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed.
Really, it was ridiculous to think of Lulu
that way . . .

Ninian laughed too. "Course she don't
dare say it," he challenged.

From within Lulu, that strange Lulu,
that other Lulu who sometimes fought her
battles, suddenly spoke out:

"I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my
wedded husband."

"You will?" Ninian cried.

"I will," she said, laughing tremulously,
to prove that she too could join in, could
he as merry as the rest.

"And I will. There, by Jove, now have
we entertained you, or haven't we?" Ninian
laughed and pounded his soft fist on the
table.

"Oh, say, honestlyl" Ina was shocked. "I

Miss LaiIu Beit

don't think you ought to — holy things — ■
what's the matter, Dwightie?"

Dwight Herbert Deacon's eyes were star-
ing and his face was scarlet.

"Say, by George," he said, "a civil wed-
ding is binding In this state."

"A civil wedding? Oh, well " Ninian

dismissed it.

"But I," said Dwight, "happen to be a
magistrate."

They looted at one another foolishly.
Dwight sprang up with the indeterminate
idea of inquiring something of some one,
circled about and returned. Ina had taken
his chair and sat clasping Lidu's hand.
Ninian continued to laugh.

"I never saw one done so offhand," said
Dwight. "But what you've said is all you
have to say according to law. And there
don't have to be witnesses . . . sayl" he
said, and sat down again.

Above that shroud-like plaited lace, the

veins of Lulu's throat showed dark as she

100

July

Swallowed, cleared her throat, "swallowed
again.

"Don't you let Dwight scare you," -^fc-,
besought Ninian.

"Scare me!" cried Ninian. "Why, I
■Miink it's a good job done, if you ask
me."

Lulu's eyes flew to his face. As he
laughed, lie was looking at Jier, and now
he nodded and shut and opened his eyes
several times very fast. Their points of
li^t flickered. With a pang of wonder
which pierced her and left her shaken, Lulu
looked. His eyes continued to meet her
own. It was exactly hke looking at his
photograph.

Dwight had recovered his authentic air.

"Oh, well," he said, "we can inquire at
our leisure. If it is necessary, I should
say we can have it set aside quietly up here
in the city— no one'U be the wiser."

"Set aside nothingl" said Ninian. "I'd
like to see it stand."

"Are you serious, Nin?"

101

:Miss Lulu Beit

"Sure 'I'm serious."
.•^tia -jerked gently at her sister's arm.
•'r'-^^ijulu! You hear him? What you go-
■'ing to say to that?"

Lulu shook her head. "He isn't in earn-
est," she said.

"I am in earnest— hope to die," Ninian
declared. He was on two legs of his chair
and was slightly tilting, so that the effect
of his earnestness was impaired. But he
was obviously in earnest.

They were looking at Lulu again. And
now she looked at Ninian, and there was
something terrible in that look which tried
to ask him, alone, about this thing.

Dwight exploded. "There was a fellow
I know there in the theatre," he cried. "I'll
get him on the hne. He could tell me if
there's any way " and was off.

Ina inexplicably began touching away
tears. "Oh," she said, "what will mamma
say?"

Lulu hardly heard her.
incalculably distant.

102

Mrs. Bett was

July

"You sure?" Lulu said low to Ninian.

For the first time, something in her ex-
ceeding isolation really touched him.

"Say," he said, "you come on with me.
We'll have it done over again somewhere,
if you say so."

"Oh," said Lulu, "if I thought "

He leaned and patted her hand.

"Good girl," he said.

They sat silent, Ninian padding on the
cloth with the flat of his plump hands.

Dwight returned. "It's a go all right,"
he said. He sat down, laughed weakly,
rubbed at his face. "You two are tied as
tight as the church could tie you."

"Good enough," said Ninian. "Eh,
Lulu?"

"It's — it's all right, I guess," Lulu said.

"Well, I'll be dished," said Dwight,

"Sister!" said Ina.

Ninian meditated, his lips set tight and

Kit is impossible to trace the pro-
if thi* man. Perhaps they were all
t of the deTil-may-oafe attitude eu-
108

I
I

Miss ZalIu Bett

gendered in any persistent traveller. Per-
haps the incomparable cookery of Lula
played its part.

"I was going to make a trip south this
month," he said, "on my way home from
here. Suppose we get married again by
somebody or other, and start right off.
You'd like that, wouldn't you — agoing
South?"

"Yes," said Lulu only,

"It's July," said Ina, with her sense of
fitness, hut no one heard.

It was arranged that their trunks should
fallow them — Ina would see to tliat, though
she was scandalised that they were not first
to return to Warhleton for the blessing (rf
Mrs. Bett.

"Mamma won't mind," said Luhi.
"Mamma can't stand a fuss any more."

They left the table. The men and women
still sitting at the other tables saw noth-
ing unusual about these four, indifferently
dressed, indifferently conditioned. The
104

I
I

July

hotel orchestra, playing ragtime in deafen-
ing concord, made Lulu's wedding march.

It was still early next day — a hot Sun-
day — when Ina and Dwight reached home.
Mrs. Bett was standing on the porch.

"Where's Lulie?" asked Mrs. Bett.

They told.

Mrs. Bett took it in, a bit at a time. Her
pale eyes searched their faces, she shook
her head, heard it again, grasped it. Her
first question was:

"Who's going to do your work?"

Ina had thought of that, and this was
manifest.

"Oh," she said, "you and I'll have to
manage."

Mrs. Bett meditated, frowning,

"I left the bacon for her to cook for your
breakfasts," she said. "I can't cook bacon
fit to eat. Neither can you."

"We've had our breakfasts," Ina escaped
from this dilemma.

^^^ from th

105

Miss Lulu Bett

"Had it up in the city, on expense?"

"Well, we didn't have much."

In Mrs. Bett's eyes tears gathered, but
they were not for Lulu,

"I should think," she said, "I should
think Lulie might have had a little more
gratitude to her than this."

On their way to church Ina and Dwighl
encountered Di, who had left the house
some time earher, stepping sedately to
church in company with Bobby Larkin.
Di was in white, and her face was the
face of an angel, so young, so question-
ing, so utterly devoid of her sophistica-
tion.

"That child," said Ina, "must not see so
much of that Larkin boy. She's just a
little, little girl."

"Of course she mustn't," said Dwight
sharply, "and if / was her mother "

"Oh stop that!" said Ina, sotto voce, at
the church steps.

To every one with whom they spoke in

the ai^ afto: church, Ina aniiounoed tbeir

106

July

news: Had they heard? liuhi married
Dwight's brother Ninian in the city yester-
day. Oh, sudden, yes I And rcwTiontie . . .
spoken with that upward infleeticm to whidh
Ina was a prey.

AUGUST

MRS. BETT had been having a
"tantrim," brought on by nothing
definable. Abruptly as she and
Ina were getting supper, Mrs. Bett had
fallen silent, had in fact refused to reply
when addressed. When all was ready and
Dwight was entering, hair wetly brushed,
she had withdrawn from the room and
closed her bedroom door until it echoed.

"She's got one again," said Ina, griev-
ing. "Dwight, you go."

He went, showing no sign of annoyance,
and stood outside his mother-in-law's door
and knocked.

No answer.

"Mother, come and have some supper."

No answer.

"Looks to me like your maffins was just
about the best ever."

Miss Lulu Bett

No answer.

"Come on — I had something funny to tell
you and Ina."

He retreated, knowing nothing of the
admirable control exercised by this woman
for her own passionate satisfaction in send-
ing him away unsatisfied. He showed
nothing but anxious concern, touched wit£
regret, at his failure. Ina, too, returned
from that door discomfited. Dwight made
a gallant eflFort to retrieve the fallen for-
tunes of their evening meal, and turned
Upon Di, who had just entered, and wrtii
exceeding facetiousness inquired how
Bobby was.

Di looked hunted. She could nev^ tell
whether her parents were going to tease
her about Bobby, or rebuke her for being
seen with him. It depended on mood, and
this mood Di had not the experienee to
gauge. She now groped for some neutral
fact, and mentioned that he was goii^ to
take her and Jenny for ice cream tiiat
sight.

112

August

Ina's irritation found just expression in
her office of motherhood.

"I won't have you downtown in the eve-
ning," she said.

"But you let me go last night."

"All the better reason why you should
not go to-night."

"I tell you," cried Dwight. "Why not
all walk down? Why not all have ice
oream ..." He was all gentleness and
propitiation, the reconciling element in his
hcHne.

"Me too?" Monona's ardent hope, her
torible fear were in her eyebrows, her
parted lips.

"You too, certainly." Dwight could not ',
do enough for every one.

Monona clapped her hands. "Goodyl
goody 1 Last time you wouldn't let me
go."

"That's why papa's going to take you
■Ijiis lime," Ina said.

These ethical balances having been nicely
struck, Ina proposed another:
113

I • HU UUIL,

Miss Lulu Bett

"But," she said, "but, you must eat more
supper or you can -not go."

"I don't want any more." Monona's
look was honest and piteous.

"Makes no difference. You must eat
or you'll get sick."

"Nol"

"Very well, then. No ice cream soda for
such a little girl."

Monona began to cry quietly. But she '
passed her plate. She ate, chewing high,
and slowly.

"See? She can eat if she will eat," Ina
said to Dwight. "The only trouble is, she
will not take the time."

"She don't put her mind on her meals,"
Dwight Herbert diagnosed it. "Oh, bigger
bites than that I" he encouraged his little
daughter.

Di's mind had been proceeding along its
own paths.

"Are you going to take Jenny
Bobby too?" she inquired.

"Certainly. The whole party."
114

August

"Bobby'U want to pay for Jenny and L"

"Me, darling," said Ina patiently,
punctiliously — and less punctiliously added:
"Nonsense. This is going to be papa's
little party."

"But we had the engagement with Bobby.
It was an engagement."

"Well," said Ina, "I think we'll just set
that aside — that important engagement. I
think we just will."

"Papa! Bobby'U want to he the one to
pay for Jenny and I "

"Di!" Ina's voice dominated all. "Will
you be more careful of your grammar or
shall I speak to you again?"

"Well, I'd rather use had grammar than
■ — than — than — " she looked resentfully
at her mother, her father. Their moral de-
fection was evident to her, hut it was in-
definable. They told her that she ought
to be ashamed when papa wanted to give
them all a treat. She sat silent, frowning,
put-iipon.

"Look, mammal" cried Monona, swal-
115

■■V

Miss Lulu Bett

lowing a third of an egg at one impulse.
Ina saw only the empty plate.

"Mamma's nice little girll" cried she,
shining upon her child.

The rules of the ordinary sports of the
playground, scrupulously applied, would
have clarified the ethical atmosphere of this
little family. But there was no one to ap-
ply them.

When Di and Monona had been excused,
Dwight asked:

"Nothing new from the bride and
groom?"

"No. And, Dwight, it's been a week since
the last."

"See — where were tliey then?"

He knew perfectly well that they were in
Savannah, Georgia, but Ina played bis
game, told him, and retold bits that the
letter had said.

"I don't understand," she added, "wi:^
ilS

I
I

August

they should go straight to Oregon without
coming here first."

Dwight hazarded that Nin probably had
to get back, and shone pleasantly in the
reflected importance of a brother filled with
affairs.

"I don't know what to make of Lulu's
letters," Ina proceeded. "They're so —

"You haven't had but two, have you?*'
"That's all — ^well, of course it's only been
a month. But both letters have been

Ina was never really articulate. What-
ever comer of her brain had the blood in it
at the moment seemed to be operative, and
she let the matter go at that.

"I don't think it's fair to mamma — going
off that way. Leaving her own mother.
Why, she may never see mamma again — "
Ina's breath caught. Into her face came
something of the lovely tenderness with
which she sometimes looked at Monona and
Di. She sprang up. She had forgotten to
117

Miss Lulu Beit

put some supper to warm for mamma. The
lovely light was still in her face as she
bustled about against the time of mamma's
recovery from her tantrim. Dwight's face
was like this when he spoke of his foster-
mother. In both these beings there was
something which functioned as pure love.

Mamma had recovered and was eating
cold scrambled eggs on the corner of the
kitchen table when the ice cream soda party
was ready to set out. Dwight threw her
a casual "Better come, too. Mother Bett,"
but she shook her head. She wished to ga,
wished it with violence, but she contrived to
give to her arbitrary refusal a quaUty of
contempt. When Jenny arrived with Bob-
by, she had brought a sheaf of gladioli for
Mrs. Bett, and took them to her in the
kitchen, and as she laid the flowers beside
her, the young girl stopped and kissed her.
"You little darling!" cried Mrs. Bett, and
clung to her, her lifted eyes lit by some-
thing intense and living. But when the ice
cream party had set off at last, Mrs. Bett
118

Aug^ust

left her supper, gathered up the flowers,
and crossed the lawn to the old cripple,
Grandma Gates.

"Inie sha'n't have 'em," the old woman
thought.
I And then it was quite beautiful to watch
' her with Grandma Gates, whom she tended
and petted, to whose complainings she lis-
tened, and to whom she tried to tell the
small events of her day. When her neigh-
bour had gone, Grandma Gates said that it
was as good as a dose of medicine to have
her come in. ;

Mrs. Bett sat on the porch restored and
pleasant when the family returned. Di and
Bobby had walked home with Jenny.

"Look here," said Dwight Herbert, "who
is it sits home and has ice cream put in her
lap, like a queen?"

"Vanilly or chocolate?" Mrs. Bett de-
manded,

"Chocolate, mammal" Ina cried, with tbe
breeze in her voice.

I VMllL

Vanilly sets better," Mrs. Bett i

Miss Lulu Bett

They sat with her on the porch while
she ate. Ina rocked on a creaking board.
Dwight swung a leg over the railing.
Monona sat pulling her skirt over her feet,
and humming all on one note. There was
no moon, hut the warm dusk had a quality
of transparency as if it were ht in all its
particles.

The gate opened, and sMne tme came i
the walk. They looked, and it was Lulu.

"WeU, if it ain't Miss Lulu Bettl**
Dwight cried involuntarily, and Ina criei
out something.

"How did you know?" Lulu asked.

"Know I Know what?"

"That it ain't Lulu Deacon. Hello^
mamma."

She passed the others, and kissed her '
mother.

"Say," said Mrs. Bett placidly. "And I .
just ate up the last spoonful o' cream."

"Ain't Luhi Deacon f Ina's Toice i
120

August

and swelled richly. "What you talking?"

"Didn't he write to you?" Lulu asked.

"Not a word." Dwight answered this.
*'AI1 we've had we had from you — the last
iroa\ Savannah, Georgia."

"Savannah, Georgia," said Lulu, and
laughed.

They could see that she was dressed well,
in dark red cloth, with a little tilting hat
and a drooping veil. She did not seem in
any wise upset, nor, save for that nervous
laughter, did she show her excitement.

"Well, hut he's here with you, isn't he?**
I>wight demanded. "Isn't he here ? Where
is he?"

"Must he 'most to Oregon hy this time,'*
Lulu said.

"Oregon!"

"You see," said Lulu, "he had another
wife."

"Why, he had not!" exclaimed Dwight
absurdly.

Yes. He hasn't seen her for fifteen
121

Miss Lulu Bett

years and he thinks she's dead. But he

1 1 sure.
"Nonsense,"

said Dwight. "Why, of

course she's dead if he thinks so,"

"I had to be s

' said Lulu.

: sure,

At first dumb before this, Ina now cried
out: "Monona! Go upstairs to bed at
<mee."

"It's only quarter to," said Slonona, with
assurance.

"Do as mamma teUs you."

"But "

"Monona!"

She went, kissing them all good-night
and taking her time about it. Everything
was suspended while she kissed them and
departed, walking slowly backward.

"Married?" said Mrs. Bett with tardy
apprehension. "Lulie, was your husband
married r'

"Yes," Lulu said, "my husband was
ried, mother."

"Mercy," said Ina. "Think of an;
Kke that in our family."
122

I tardy
lusband ^^

as mar- ^H

August

"Well, go on — go onl" Dwight cried.
"Tell us about it."

Liulu spoke in a monotone, with her old
manner of hesitation :

"We were going to Oregon. First down
to New Orleans and then out to California
and up the coast." On this she paused and
sighed. "Well, then at Savannah, Georgia,
he said he thought I better know, first So
he told me."

"Yes — well, what did he say?" Dwight
demanded irritably.

"Cora Waters," said Lulu. "Cora Wa^
ters. She married him down in San Diego,
eighteen years ago. She went to South
America with him."

"Well, he never let us know of it, if she
did," said Dwight.

"No. She married him just before he
went. Then in South America, after two
years, she ran away again. That's all he
knows,"

"That's a pretty story," said Dwight
ctmtemptuously.

128

Miss Lulu Belt

"He says if she'd been alive, she'd been
after him for a. divorce. And she never has
been, so he thinks she must be dead. The
trouble is," Lulu said again, "he wasn't
sure. And I had to be sure."

"Well, but mercy," said Ina, "couldn't
he find out now?"

1 "It might take a long time," said Lulu
simply, "and I didn't want to stay and not
know."

"Well, then, why didn't he say so here?"
Ina's indignation mounted.

"He would have. But you know how
sudden everything was. He said he thought
about telling us right there in the restau-
rant, but of course that'd been hard — ■
wouldn't it? And then he felt so sure she
was dead."

"Why did he tell you at all, then?" de-
manded Ina, whose processes were simple.

"Yes. Weill Why indeed?" Dwight
Herbert brought out these words with
curious emphasis.

I thought that, jiist at first," Lulu sail
124

August

"but only just at first. Of course that
wouldn't have been right. And then, you
see, he gave me my choice."

"Gave you your choice?" Dwight echoed,

"Yes. About going on and taking the
chances. He gave me my choice when he
told me, there in Savannah, Georgia."

"What made him conclude, by then, that
you ought to be told?" Dwight asked.

"Why, he'd got to thinking about it,"
she answered.

A silence fell. Lulu sat looking out to-
ward the street.

"The only thing," she said, "as long as
it happened, I kind of wish he hadn't told
me till we got to Oregon."

"Lulul" said Ina. Ina began to cry.
"You poor thing I" she said.

Her tears were a signal to Mrs. Bett,
who had been striving to understand all.
Now she too wept, tossing up her hands
and rocking her body. Her saucer and
spoon clattered on her knee.

"He felt bad too," Lulu said.
125

Miss Lndu Bett

"He I" said Dwight. "He must have."

"It's you," Ina sobbed. "It's you. My
sister!"

"Well," said Lulu, "but I never tfaou^t
of it making you both feel bad, or I
wouldn't have come home. I knew," she
added, "it'd make Dwight feel bad. I
mean, it was his brother "

"Thank goodness," Ina broke in, "no-
body need know about it."

Lulu regarded her, without change.

"Oh, yes," she said in her monotone.
'Teople will have to know."

"I do not see the necessity." Dwi^it's
voice was an edge. Then too he said "do
not," always with Dwight betokening the
finahties.

"'Why, what would they think?" Lulu
asked, troubled.

"What difference does it make what they
think?"

"Why," said Lulu slowly, "I shouldn't
like — you see they might— why, Dwight,
think we'll have to tell them.
126

figiit, I ^1

August

"You do! You think the disgrace of
bigamy in this family is something the whole
town will have to know about?"

Lulu looked at him with parted hps.

"Say," she said, "I never thought about
it being that."

Dwight laughed. "What did you think
it was? And whose disgrace is it, pray?"

"Ninian's," said Lulu.

"Ninian's I Well, he's gone. But you're
here. And I'm here. Folks'll feel sorry for
you. But the disgrace — that'd reflect on
me. See?"

"But if we don't tell, what'll they think
then?"

Said Dwight: "They'll tliink what they
always think when a wife leaves her hus-
band. They'll think you couldn't get along.
That's all."

"I should hate that," said Lulu.

"Well, I should hate the other, let me
tell you."

"Dwight, Dwight," said Ina. "Let's go

in the house. I'm afraid they'll hear "

127

Miss Lulu Bett

^^k mon

As they rose, Mrs. Bett plucked at her
returned daughter's sleeve.

"Lulie," she said, "was his other wife —
was she there?"

"No, no, mother. She wasn't there."

Mrs. Belt's lips moved, repeating the
words. "Then that ain't so bad," she said.
"I was afraid maybe she turned you out."

"No," Lulu said, "it wasn't that bad,
mother."

Mrs. Bett brightened. In little matters,
she quarrelled and resented, but the large
issues left her blank.

Through some indeterminate sense of the
importance due this crisis, the Deacons en-
tered their parlour. Dwight lighted that
high, central burner and faced about, say-
ing:

"In fact, I simply will not have it, Lulu I
You expect, I take it, to make your hone
with us in the future, on the old terms."

"WeU "

I mean, did Ninian give you any
money?"

128

August

"No. He didn't give me any money —
only enough to get home on. And I kept

my suit whyl" she flung her head back,

"I wouldn't have taken any money 1"

"That means," said Dwight, "that you
will have to continue to live here — on the
old terms, and of course I'm quite wi llin g
that you should. Let me tell you, however,
that this is on condition — on condition that
this disgraceful business is kept to our-
selves."

She made no attempt to combat him now.
She looked back at him, quivering, and in a
great surprise, but she said nothing.

"Truly, Lulu," said Ina, "wouldn't that
be best? They'll talk anyway. But this
way they'll only talk about you, and the
other way it'd be about all of us."

Lulu said only: "But the other way would
be the truth."

Dwight's eyes narrowed : "My dear
Lulu," he said, "are you sure of that?"

"Sure?"

"Yes. Did he give you any proofs?**
120

Miss Lulu Bett

"Proofs?"

"Letters — documents of any sort? Any
sort of assurance that he was speaking the
truth?"

"Why, no," smd Lulu. "Proofs — no.
He told me."

"He told youl"

"WTiy, that was hard enough to have to
do. It was terrible for hipi to have to do.
What proofs " She stopped, puzzled.

"Didn't it occur to you," said Dwight,
"that he might have told you that because
he didn't want to have to go on with it?"

As she met his look, some power seemed
to go from Lulu. She sat down, looked
weakly at them, and within her closed lips
her jaw was slightly fallen. She said noth-
ing. And seeing on her skirt a spot of
durt she began to rub at that.

"Why, Dwightl" Ina cried, and moved
to her sister's side.

"I may as well tell you," he said, "that

I myself have no idea that Xinian told you

the truth. He was always imagining things

180

I
I

August

—you saw that. I know him pretty well
— have been more or less in touch with him
the whole time. In short, I haven't the least
idea he was ever married hefore."

Lulu continued to rub at her skirt.

"I never thought of that," she said

"Look here," Dwight went on persuasire'
ly, "hadn't you and he had some little tifl
when he told you?"

"No — nol Why, not once. Why, we
weren't a bit like you and Ina."

She spoke simply and from her heart
and without guile.

"Evidently not," Dwight said drily.

Lulu went on: "He was very good to
me. This dress — and my shoes — and my
hat. And another dress, too." She found
the pins and took off her hat. "He liked
the red wing," she said. "I wanted black
— oh, Dwight! He did tell me the truth 1"
It was as if the red wing had abruptly
borne mute witness.

Dwight's tone now mounted. His man-
ner, it mounted too.

131

Miss Lulu Bett

"Even if it is true," said he, "I desire
that you should keep silent and protect my
family from this scandal. I merely menticm
my doubts to you for your own profit."

"My own profit 1"

She said no more, but rose and mored
to the door.

"Lulu — ^you see ! With Di and all !" Ina
"We just couldn't have this
known — even if it was so."

"You have it in your hands," said
Dwight, "to repay me, Lulu, for anything
that you feel I may have done for you in
the past. You also have it in your hands
to decide whether your home here contin-
ues. That is not a pleasant position for me
to find myself in. It is distinctly unpleas-
ant, I may say. But you see for yourself."

Lulu went on, into the passage.

"Wasn't she married when she thought
she was?" Mrs. Bett cried shriUy,

"Mamma," said Ina. "Do, please, re-
member Monona. Yes — Dwight tiiinks
18S

August

she's married all right now — and that it's
aH right, all the time."

"Well, I hope so, for pity sakes," said
Mrs. Bett, and left the room with her
daughter.

Hearing the stir, Monona upstairs lifted
her voice:

"Mamma! Come on and hear my
prayers, why don't you?"

When they came downstairs next morn-
ing. Lulu had breakfast ready.

"Weill" cried Ina in her curving tone,
"if this isn't hke old times."

Lulu said yes, that it was like old times,
and brought the bacon to tlie table.

"Lulu's the only one in this house
can cook the bacon so's it'll chew," Mrs.
Bett volunteered. She was wholly affable,
and held contentedly to Ina's last word that
Dwight thought now it,was all right.

"Hoi" said Dwight. "The happy family,
once more about the festive toaster." He
gauged the moment to call for good ebeer.
183

Miss IaiIu Bett

Ina, too, became breezy, blithe. Monona
caught their spirit and laughed, head thrown
well back and gently shaken.

Di came in. She bad been told that
Auntie Lulu was at home, and that she,
Di, wasn't to say anything to her about
anything, nor anything to anybody else
about Auntie Lulu being back. Under
these prohibitions, which loosed a thousand
speculations, Di was very nearly paralysed.
She stared at her Aunt Lulu incessantly.

Not one of them had even a talent for
the casual, save Lulu herself. Lulu was
amazingly herself. She took her old place,
assumed her old offices. When Monona
declared against bacon, it was Lulu who
suggested milk toast and went to make it.

"Mamma," Di whispered then, like es-
caping steam, "isn't Uncle Ninian coming
too?"

"Hush. No. Now don't ask any more
questions."

"Well, can't I tell Bobby and Jenny
she's here?"

184

"No. Don't say anything at all about
her."

"But, mamma. What has she done?"

"Di! Do as mamma tells you. Don't
you think mamma knows beat?"

Di of course did not think so, had not
thought so for a long time. But now
Dwight said:

"Daughter! Are you a little girl or are
you our grown-up young lady?"

"I don't know," said Di reasonably, "but
I think you're treating me like a little
girl now."

"Shame. Di," said Ina, unabashed by the
accident of reason being on the side of Di.

"I'm eighteen," Di reminded them for-
lornly, "and through high school."

"Then act so," boomed her father.

Baffled, thwarted, bewildered, Di went
over to Jenny Plow's and there imparted
imderstanding by the simple process of
letting Jenny guess, to questions sidlfully
shaped.

When Dwight said, "Look at my beauti-
135

Miss Lulu Bett

fill handkerchief," displayed a hole, sent
his Ina for a better. Lulu, with a manner
or haste, addressed him:

"Dwight. It's a funny thing, but I j
haven't Xinian's Oregon address."

"Well?"

"Well, I wish you'd give it to me."

Dwight tightened and lifted his lips.
"It would seem," he said, "that you have ^
no real use for that particular address,
Lulu."

"Yes, I have. I want it. You have it,
haven't you, Dwight?"

"Certainly I have it."

"Won't you please write it down for
me?" She had ready a bit of paper and
a pencil stump.

"My dear Lulu, now why revive any-
thing? Why not be sensible and leave
this alone? No good can come by "

"But why shouldn't I have his address?"

"If everything is over between you, why
should you?"

"But you say he's still my husband."

I
I.

•J'

August

Dwight flushed. "If my brother has
shown his inclination as plainly as I judge
that he has, it is certainly not my place
to put you in touch with him again."

"You won't give it to me?"

"My dear Lulu, in all kindness — ^no."

His Ina came running back, bearing
hajidkerchiefs with different coloured bor-
ders for him to choose from. He chose the
initial that she had embroidered, and had
not the good taste not to kiss her.

They were all on the porch that evening,
when Lulu came downstairs.

"Where are you going?" Ina demanded,
sisterly. And on hearing that Lulu had
an errand, added still more sisterly; "Well,
but mercy, what you so dressed up for?"

Lulu was in a thin black and white gown
which they had never seen, and wore the tilt-
ing hat with the red wing.

"Ninian bought me this," said Lulu
only.

'But, Luhi, dcm't you think it might be
1»7

H Miss Lulu Bett ^|

^1 better to keep, well — out of sight for a

H| few days?" Ina's lifted look besought her.

"Why?" Lulu asked. ^m

"Why set people wondering till we have ^^|

■ ^

^B "They don't have to wonder, far as I'm

^f concerned," said Lulu, and went donn the

" walk. ^

Ina looked at Dwight "She never spoke ^H

to me like that in her life before," she

said.

^^ She watched her sister's black and white ^^

^H figure going erectly down the street ^H

^V "That gives me the funniest feeling," ^^|

said Ina, "as if Lulu had on clothes bought

for her by some one that wasn't— that

^_ was " ^^m

^H "£y her husband who has left her," said ^^|

^H Dwight sadly. ^|

^H "Is that what it is, papa?" Di asked

^^^ alertly. For a wonder, she was there; had

^^K been there the greater part of the day —

^^P most of the time staring, fascinated, at h^

^^m Aunt Lulu. ^^

^K ^^^ ^1

I
I

August

"That's what it is, my little girl," said
Dwight, and shook his head.

"Well, I think it's a shame," said Di
stoutly. "And I think Uncle Ninian is a
slunge."

"Dii"

"I do. And I'd be ashamed to think
anything else. I'd like to tell everybody."

"There is," said Dwight, "no need for
secrecy — now."

'T)wightl" said Ina — Ina's eyes always
remained expressionless, but it must have
been her lashes that looked so startled.

"No need whatever for secrecy," he re-
peated with firmness. "The truth is, Lulu's
husband has tired of her and sent her home.
We must face it."

"But, Dwight— how awful for Lulu . . ."

"Lulu," said Dwight, "has us to stand
by her."

Lulu, walking down the main street,
thought :

"Now Mis' Chambers is seeing me.
Now Mis' Curtis. There's somebody be-

Miss Lulu Bett

hind the vines at Mis' Martin's. Here
comes Mis' Grove and I've got to speak to
her . . ."

One and another and another met her,
and every one cried out at her some ver-
sion of: I

"Lulu Bett!" Or, "W-well, it im't Lulu
Bett any more, is it? Well, what are yoa
doing here? I thought . . ."

"I'm back to stay," she said.

"The idea! "Well, where you hiding that
handsMue husband of yours? Say, but we
were surprised I You're the sly one **

"My — Mr. Deacon isn't here."

••Oh."

"Xo. He's West"

••Oh, I see."

Having no arts, she must needs let tiie
conii~ersati«i die like this, could invent Dotb-
ing concealing tx gracious on whidi to
move away.

She wait to tbe post-office. It
early, there were few at the post-i^ce — -
witli only one cr two there had she toj
140

August

through her examination. Then she went
to the general delivery window, tense for
a new ordeal.

To her relief, the face which was shown
there was one strange to her, a slim youth,
reading a letter of his own, and smiling.

"Excuse me," said Lulu faintly.

The youth looked up, with eyes warmed
by the words on the pink paper which he
held.

"Could you give me the address of Mr.
Ninian Deacon?"

"Let's see — you mean Dwight Deacon,
I guess?"

"No. It's his brother. He's been here.
From Oregon, I thought he might have

given you his address " she dwindled

away.

"Wait a minute," said the youth. "Nope.
No address here. Say, why don't you send
it to his brother? He'd know. Dwight
Deacon, the dentist."

"I'll do that," Lulu said absurdly, and
turned away.

141

Miss LiUlu Bett

I
I

She went back up the street, walking fast
now to get away from them all. Once or
twice she pretended not to see a familiar
face. But when she passed the mirror
in an insurance office window, she saw her
reflection and at its appearance she felt
surprise and pleasure.

"Well!" she thought, almost in Ina's
own manner.

Abruptly her confidence rose.

Something of this confidence was still
upon her when she returned- They were
in the cUning-room now, all save Di, who
was on the porch with Bobby, and ^Monona,
who was in bed and might be heard ex-
iraragantly singing.

Lulu sat down with her bat cm. When
Dwight inquired playfully, "Ccoi't wc }odk.
like company?" she did not reply. 'Qit
looked at ber speculatively. Where kad
sbe gooe, with whom had she talked, wfa^
Iiad sbe toldf Ina looked at ber
feufuUy. But Mis. Bett rocked
cdiy and ate cardamom seeds,
\*&

August

"Whom did you see?" Ina asked.

Lulu named them.

"See them to talk to?" from Dwight.

Oh, yes. They had all stopped.

"What did they say?" Ina burst out.

They had inquired for Ninian, Lulu said ;
and said no more.

Dwight mulled this. Lulu might have
told every one of these women that cock-
and-bull story with which she had come
home. It might be all over town. Of
course, in that case he could turn Lulu
out — should do so, in fact. Still the story
would be all over town.

"Dwight," said Lulu, "I want Ninian's
address."

"Going to write to him!" Ina cried in-
credulously.

"I want to ask him for the proofs that
Dwight wanted."

"My dear Lulu," Dwight said impa-
tiently, "you are not the one to write.
Have you no delicacy?"

Lulu smiled — a strange smile, originate
148

^^M Have you no
^^ft Lulu smilet

ing and dying in one corner of her mouth.

"Yes, she said. "So much dehcacy that
I want to be sure whether I'm married or
not."

Dwight cleared his throat with a move-
ment which seemed to use his shoulders
for the purpose.

"I myself will take this up with my
brother," he said. "I will write to him
about it."

Lulu sprang to her feet. "Write to him
now!" she cried.

"Really," said Dwight, lifting his brows.

"Now — nowl" Lulu said. She moved
about, collecting writing materials from
their casual lodgments on shelf and table.
She set all before him and stood by him.
"Write to him now," she said again.

"My dear Lulu, don't be absurd."

She said: "Ina. Help me. If it was
Dwight — and they didn't know whether
he had another wife, or not, and you wanted
to ask him — oh, don't you see? Help

144

■

August

Ina was not yet the woman to cry for
justice for its own sake, nor even to stand
by another woman. She was primitive,
and her instinct was to look to her own male
merely.

"Well," she said, "of course. But why
not let Dwight do it in his own way?
Wouldn't that be better?"

She put it to her sister fairly: Now, no
matter what Dwight's way was, wouldn't
that be better?

"Mother!" said Lxilu. She looked ir-
resolutely toward her mother. But Mrs.
Bett was eating cardamom seeds with ex-
ceeding gusto, and Lulu looked away.
Caught by the gesture, Mrs, Bett voiced
her grievance.

"Lulie," she said, "Set down. Take off
your hat, why don't you?"

Ldulu turned upon Dwight a quiet face
which he had never seen before.

"You write that letter to Ninian," she
said, "and you make him tell you so you'll
145

Miss Lulu Bett

understand. / know he spoke the truth.
But I want you to know."

"M — m," said Dwight. "And then 1
suppose you're going to tell it all over
town — -as soon as you have the proofs."

"I'm going to tell it all over town,**
said Lulu, "just as it is — unless you write
to him now."

"Lulu I" cried Ina. "Oh, yoa wouldnt."

"I would," said Lulu. "I will."

Dwight was sobered. This unimagined
Lulu looked capable of it. But then he
aieered.

"And get turned out of this house, as
you would be?"

'Dwight !" cried his Ina, "Oh, you
wouldn't !"

"I would," said Dwight "I will. Lula
knows it."

"I shall tell what I know and then leave
your house anyway," said Luhi, "unless
you get Xinian's word. And I want you
should write him now."
146

ou ^H

"Leave your mother? And Ina?" he
asked.

"Leave everything," said Lulu.

"Oh, Dwight," said Ina, "we can't get
along without Lulu." She did not say in
what particulars, but Dwight knew.

Dwight looked at Lulu, an upward, side-
wise look, with a manner of peering out
to see if she meant it. And he saw.

He shrugged, pursed his lips crookedly,
rolled his head to signify the inexpressible.
"Isn't that like a woman?" he demanded.
He rose. "Rather than let you in for a
show of temper," he said grandly, "I'd do
anything."

He wrote the letter, addressed it, his
hand elaborately curved in secrecy about
the envelope, pocketed it.

"Ina and I'll walk down with you to
mail it," said Lulu.

Dwight hesitated, frowned. His Ina
watched him with consulting brows.

"I was going," said DwJght, "to pro-
pose a little stroll before bedtime." He
147

Miss Lulu Bett

roved about the rocrni. "Where's my beau-
tiful straw hat? There's nothing Hke a.
brisk walk to induce sound, restful sleep,"
he told them. He hummed a bar.

"You'll be all right, mother?" Loin J
asked.

Mrs. Bett did not look up. "These carda- '
mon hev got a little mite too dry," s
said.

In their room, Ina and Dwight discussed j
the incredible actions of Lulu.

"I saw," said Dwight, "I saw she wasn't
herself. I'd do anything to avoid having
a scene — you know that." His glance swept
a Uttle anxiously his Ina, "You know j
that, don't you ?" he sharply inquired.

"But I really think you ought to have |
written to Xinian about it," she now dared i
to say. "It's — it's not a nice positiai for ,
Lulu."

"Nice? Well, but whran has she got to
blame for it?"

"Why, Ximan," said Ina. |

118

^^ in—

August

Dwight threw out his hands. "Herself,"
he said. "To tell you the truth, I was
perfectly amazed at the way she snapped
him up there in that restaurant."

"Why, but, Dwight "

"Brazen," he said. "Oh, it was brazen."

"It was just fun, in the first place."

"But no really nice woman— — " he shook
bis head.

"Dwightl Lulu is nice. The idea!"

He regarded her. "Would you have done
that?" he would know.

Under his fond look, she softened, took
his homage, accepted everything, was si-
lent.

"Certainly not," he said. "Lulu's tastes
are not fine like yours. I should never
think of you as sisters,"

"She's awfully good," Ina said feebly.
Fifteen years of married life behind her — but
this was sweet and she could not resist.

"She has excellent qualities." He ad-
mitted it. "But look at the position she's
in — married to a man who tells her he has
149

Miss Lulu Bett

another wife in order to get free. Now,
no really nice woman "

"No really nice man " Ina did say I

that much.

"Ah," said Dwight, "but you could never J
be in such a position. No, no. Lulu
sadly lacking somewhere."

Ina sighed, threw back her head, caught
her lower lip with her upper, as might be
in a hem. "What if it was Di?" she sup- i

"Dil" Dwight's look rebuked his wife.!
"Di," he said, "was born with ladylike feel- 1
ings."

It was not yet ten o'clock. Bobby Lar-
kin was permitted to stay until ten. Front ,
the veranda came the indistinguishable mur-
mur of those young voices,

"Bobby," Di was saying within that mur- |
mur, "Bobby, you don't kiss me as if you
really wanted to fciss me, to-night."

SEPTEMBER

^
N

SEPTEMBER

THE office of Dwight Herbert Dea-
con, Dentist, Gold Work a Spe-
ciality (sic) in black lettering, and
Justice of the Peace in gold, was above a
store which had been occupied by one un-
lucky tenant after another, and had suffered
long periods of vacancy when ladies' aid so-
cieties served lunches there, under great
white signs, badly lettered. Some months
of disuse were now broken by the news
that the store had been let to a music man.
A music man, what on earth was that,
Warbleton inquired.

The music man arrived, installed three
pianos, and filled his window with sheet
music, as sung by many ladies who swung
in hammocks or kissed their hands on the
music covers. While he was still moving
15S

Miss Lulu Bett

in, Dwight Herbert Deacon wandered
downstairs and stood informally in the
door of the new store. The music man, a
pleasant-faced chap of thirty-odd, was
rubbing at the face of a piano.

"Hello, there 1" he said. "Can I sell you
an upright?"

"If I can take it out in pulling your
teeth, you can," Dwight replied. "Or,"
said he, "I might marry you free, either
one."

On this their friendship began. Thence-
forth, when business was dull, the idle hours
of both men were beguiled with idle gossip.

"How the dickens did you think of
pianos for a line?" Dwight asked him once.
"Now, my father was a dentist, so I came
by it natural — never entered my head to
be anything else. But pianos "

The music man — ^his name was Neil
Cornish — threw up his chin in a boyish
fashion, and said he'd he jiggered if he
knew. All up and down the Warbleton
main street, the chances are that the an-
154

September

swer would sound the same. "I'm studying
law when I get the chance," said Cornish,
as one who makes a bid to he thought of
more highly.

"I see," said Dwight, respectfully
dwelling on the verb.

Later on Cornish confided more to
Dwight: He was to come hy a little in-
heritance some day — not much, but some-
thing. Yes, it made a man feel a certain
confidence . . .

^^ "Don't it?" said Dwight heartUy, as if

^^k he knew.

^^P Every one liked Cormsh. He told funny
stories, and he never compared Warbleton
save to its advantage. So at last Dwight

■ said tentatively at lunch :
"Wliat if I brought that Niel Cornish up
for supper, one of these nights?"

"Oh, Dwightie, do," said Ina. "If there's
a man in town, let's know it."
j^^l "What if I brought him up to-night?"
^^1 Up went Ina's eyebrows. To-night?
^^B " 'Scalloped potatoes and meat loaf and
^H 155

Miss LmIu Bett

sauce and bread and butler," Lulu con-
tributed.

Cornish came to supper. He was what
is known in "VVarbleton as dapper. This
Ina saw as she emerged on the veranda in
response to Dwight's informal haQoo on
his way upstairs. She herself was in white
muslin, now much too snug, and a blue
ribbon. To her greeting their guest re-
plied in that engaging shyness which is
not awkwardness. He moved in some
pleasant web of gentleness and friendli-
ness.

They asked him the usual questions, and
he replied, rocking all the time with a
faint undulating motion of head and shoul-
ders: Warbleton was one of the prettiest
little towns that he had ever seen. He liked
the people — ^they seemed different. He
was sure to like the place, already Uked it.
Lulu came to the doco* in Xinian's thin
black-and-white gown. She shook hands
with the stranger, not Inolnpg at him, and
said, "Come to supper. aU." Monona was
156

September

already in her place, singing under-breath.
Mrs. Bett, after hovering in the kitchen
door, entered; but they forgot to introduce
her.

"Where's Di?" asked Ina. "I declare
that daughter of mine is never anywhere."

A brief silence ensued as they were seated.
There being a guest, grace was to come,
and Dwight said unintelligibly and like
lightning a generic appeal to bless this food,
forgive all our sins and finally save us.
And there was something tremendous, in
this ancient form whereby all stages of
men bow in some now unrecognized recog-
nition of the ceremonial of taking food to
nourish life — and more.

At "Amen" Di flashed in, her offices at
the mirror fresh upon her — perfect hair,
silk dress turned up at the hem. She met
Cornish, crimsoned, fluttered to her seat,
joggled the table and, "Oh, dear," she said
audibly to her mother, "I forgot my ring."

The talk was saved alive by a frank ef-
fort. Dwight served, making jests about
157

Miss Lulu Bett

everybody coming back for more. They
went on with Warbleton happenings, im-
provements and openings ; and the run-
away. Comish tried hard to make himself
agreeable, not ingratiatingly but good-
naturedly. He wished profoundly that be-
fore coming he had looked up some more
stories in the back of the Jklusical Gazettes.
Lulu surreptitiously pinched off an wit
that was running at large upon the doth
and thereafter kept her eyes steadfastly
on the sugar-bowl to see if it could be from
that. Dwight pretended that those whom
he was helping a second time were getting
more tlian their share and facetiously land-
ed on Di about eating so much that she
would grow up and be married, first thing
she knew. At the word "married" Di
turned scarlet, laughed heartily and lifted
her glass of water.

"And what instruments do you pUyr*
Ina asked Comish, in an imrelated cSart
to lift the talk to musical levels.

"Well, do you know," said the music

September

man, "I can't play a thing. Don't know
a black note from a white one."

"You don't? Why, Di plays very pret-
tily," said Di's mother. "But then how can
you tell what songs to order?" Ina cried.

"Oh, by the music houses. You go by
the sales." For the first time it occurred
to Cornish that this was ridiculous. "You
know, I'm really studying law," he said,
shyly and proudly. Law! How veiy in-
teresting, from Ina. Oh, but won't he
bring up some songs some evening, for
them to try over? Her and Di? At this
Di laughed and said that she was out of
practice and lifted her glass of water. In
the presence of adults Di made one weep,
she was so slender, so young, so without
defences, so intolerably sensitive to every
contact, so in agony lest she be found want-
ing. It was amazing how unlike was this
Di to the Di who had ensnared Bobby
Larkin. What was one to think?

Cornish paid very little attention to her.

To Lulu he said kindly, "Don't you play,

159

^H Cornish paic
^^^ To Lulu he si

Miss Lulu Bett

Miss ?" He had not caught her name

— no stranger ever did catch it. But
Dwi^ht now supplied it: "Miss Lulu Bett,"
he explained with loud emphasis, and Lulu
burned her slow red. This question Lulu
had usually answered by telling how a
felon had interrupted her lessons and she
had stopped "taking" — a participle sacred
to music, in Warbleton. This vignette had
been a kind of epitome of Lulu's biography.
But now Lulu was heard to say serenely:

"No, but I'm quite fond of it. I went
to a lovely concert — two weeks ago."

They all Ustened. Strange indeed to
think of Lulu as having had experiences of
which they did not know.

"Yes," she said. "It was in Savannah,
Georgia." She flushed, and lifted her eyes
in a manner of faint defiance. "Of course,"
she said, "I don't know the names of all
the different instruments they played, but
there were a good many." She laughed
pleasantly as a part of her sentence. "They
had some lovely tunes," she said. She

160

September

knew that the subject was not exiiaiisted
and she hurried on. "The hall was real
large," she superadded, "and there were
quite a good many people there. And it
was too warm."

"I see," said Cornish, and said what he
had been waiting to say: That be too had
been in Savannah, Georgia.

Lulu lit with pleasure. "Weill" she
said. And her mind worked and she
caught at the moment before it had es-
caped. "Isn't it a pretty city?" she asked.
And Cornish assented with the intense
heartiness of the provincial. He, too, it
seemed, had a conversational appearance to
maintain by its own effort. He said that
he had enjoyed being in that town and that
he was there for two hours.

"I was there for a week." Lulu's su-
periority was really pretty.

"Have good weather?" Cornish selected
next.

Oh, yes. And they saw all the differ-
ent buildings — but at her "we" she flushed
161

Miss Lulu Bett

and was silenced. She was colouring and
breathing quickly. Tliis was the first bit
of conversation of this sort of Lulu's life.

After supper Ina inevitably proposed cro-
quet, D wight pretended to try to escape
and, with his irrespressible mien, talked
about Ina, elaborate in his insistence on tbe
third person — "She loves it, we have to
humour her, you know how it is. Or no I
You don't know I But you will"— and more
of the same sort, everybody laughing heart-
ily, save Lulu, who looked uncomfortable
and wished that Dwight wouldn't, and Mrs.
Eett, who paid no attention to anybody
that night, not because she had not been
introduced, an omission, which she had not
even noticed, but merely as another form
of "tantrim." A self-indulgence.

They emerged for croquet. And there
t;n the porch sat Jenny Plow and Bobby,
waiting for Di to keep an old engagement,
which Di pretended to have forgotten, and
to be frightfully annoyed to have to keep.
She met the objections of her parents with
162

September

all the batteries of her coquetry, set fop
both Bobby and Cornish and, bold in the
presence of "company," at last went laugh-
ing away. And in the minute areas of her
consciousness she said to herself that Bobby
would be more in love with her than ever
because she had risked all to go with him;
and that Cornish ought to be distinctly at-
tracted to her because she had not stayed.
She was as primitive as pollen.

Ina was vexed. She said so, pouting in
a fashion which she should have outgrown
with white muslin and blue ribbons, and
she had outgrown none of these things.

"That just spoils croquet," she said, "I'm
yexed. Now ■vfe can't have a real game,"

From the side-door, where she must have
been lingering among the waterproofs,
Lulu stepped forth.

"I'll play a game," she said.

When Cornish actually proposed to bring
some music to the Deacons', Ina turned
toward Dwight Herbert all the facets of
163

Miss Lulu Bett

her responsibility. And Ina's sense of re-
sponsibility toward Di was enormous,
oppressive, primitive, amounting, in fact,
toward tliis daughter of Dwight Herbert's
late wife, to an ability to compress the offices
of stepmotherhood into the functions of
the lecture platform. Ina was a fountain
of admonition. Her idea of a daughter,
step or not, was tliat of a manufactured
product, strictly, which you constantly
pinched and moulded. She thought that
a moral preceptor had the right to secrete
precepts. Di got them all. But of course
the crest of Ina's responsibihty was to
marry Di. This verb should be transitive
only when lovers are speaking of each
other, or the minister or magistrate is
speaking of lovers. It should never be
transitive when predicated of parents or
any other third party. But it is. Ina was
quite agitated by its transitiveness as she
took to her husband her incredible respon-
sibility.
"You know, Herbert," said Ina, "if this J
164

Mr. Cornish comes here very much, what
we may expect."

"What may we expect?" demanded
Dwight Herbert, crisply.

Ina always played his games, answered
what he expected her to answer, pretended
to be intuitive when she was not so, said
"I know" when she didn't know at all.
Dwight Herbert, on the other hand, did
not even play her games when he knew
perfectly what she meant, but pretended
not to understand, made her repeat, made
her explain. It was as if Ina had to please
him for, say, a Uving; but as for that den-
tist, he had to please nobody. In the con-
versations of Dwight and Ina you saw the
historical home forming in clots in the
fluid wash of the community,

"He'll fall in love with Di," said Ina.

"And what of that? Little daughter will
have many a man fall in love with her, /
should say."

"Yes, but, Dwight, what do you think
ot himr

166

Miss Lulu Bett

"What do I think of him? My dear|
Ina, I have other things to think of."

"But we don't know anything aboutj
him, Dwight — a stranger so."

"On the other hand," said Dwi^t wltb
dignity, "I know a good deal about him."

With a great air of having done the
fatherly and found out about this stranger
before bringing him into the home, Dwight
now related a number of stray circum-
stances dropped by Cornish in their chance
talks.

"He has a little inheritance coming
him — shortly," Dwight wound up.

"An inheritance — ^really? How
Dwight?"

"Now isn't that like a woman. Isn't it?"

"I thought he was from a good family,"
said Ina.

"My mercenary little pussy!" |

"Well," she said with a sigh, "I shouldn't
be surprised if Di did really accept him.
A young girl is awfully flattered when ft.
166

chance

ing bi^H

red when ».^^J

September

good-looking older man pays her atten-
tion. Haven't you noticed that?"

Dwight informed her, with an air of
immense abstraction, that he left all such
matters to her. Being married to Dwight
was like a perpetual rehearsal, with
Dwight's self-importance for audience.

A few evenings later, Cornish brought
up the music. There was something over-
powering in this brown-haired chap against
the background of his negligible little shop,
his whole capital in his few pianos. For he
looked hopefully ahead, woke with plans,
regarded the children in the street as if,
conceivably, children might come within the
confines of his life as he imagined it. A
preposterous little man. And a preposter-
ous store, empty, echoing, bare of wall, the
three pianos near the front, the remainder of
the floor stretching away like the corridors
of the lost. He was going to get a dark
curtain, he explained, and furnish the back
part of the store as his own room. What
dignity in phrasing, but how mean that
167

Miss Lulu Bett

little room would look — cot bed, washbowl
and pitcher, and little mirror — almost cer-
tainly a mirror with a wavy surface, al-
most certainly that,

"And then, you know," he alwttys added,
"I'm reading law."

The Plows had been asked in that even-
ing. Bobby was there. They were, Dwight
Herbert said, going to have a sing.

Di was to play. And Di was now em-
barked on the most difficult feat of her
emotional life, the feat of remaining to
Bobby Larkin the lure, the beloved lure,
the while to Cornish she instinctively played
the role of womanly little girl.

"Up by the festive lamp, everybody I"
Dvdght Herbert cried.

As they gathered about the upright
piano, that startled, Dwightish instrument,
standing in its attitude of unrest. Lulu came
in with another lamp.

"Do you need this?" she asked.

They did not need it, there was, in fact,
no place to set it, and this Lulu must have
168

September

known. But Dwight found a place. He
swept Ninian's photograph from the mar-
ble shelf of the mirror, and when Lulu had
placed the lamp there, Dwight thrust the
photograph into her hands.

"You take care of that," he said, with
a droop of hd discernible only to those who
—presumably — loved him. His old atti-
tude toward Lulu had shown a terrible
sharj>ening in these ten days since her re-
turn.

She stood uncertainly, in the thin black
and white gown which Ninian had bought
for her, and held Ninian's photograph and
looked helplessly about. She was moving
toward the door when Cornish called:

"See here! Aren't you going to sing?"

"What?" Dwight used the falsetto.
"Lulu sing? LaiIu?"

She stood awkwardly. She had a piteous
recrudescence of her old agony at being
spoken to in the presence of others. But
Di had opened the "Album of Old Favour-
which Cornish had elected to bring,
lAB

and now she struck the opening chords of
"Bonny Eloise." Lulu stood stUl, look"
ing rather piteously at Cornish. Dwight
offered his arm, absurdly crooked. The
Plows and Ina and Di began to sing. Lulu
moved forward, and stood a little away
from them, and sang, too. She was still
holding Ninian's picture. Dwight did not
sing. He lifted his shoulders and his eye-
brows and watched Lulu.

When they had finished, "Lulu the mock-
ing bird!" Dwight cried. He said "ba-ird."

"Fine !" cried Cornish. "Why, Miss
Lulu, you have a good voice 1"

"Miss Lulu Bett, the mocking ba-irdl"
Dwight insisted.

Lulu was excited, and in some accessitai
of faint power. She turned to him now,
quietly, and with a look of appraisal.

"Lulu the dove," she then surprisingly
said, "to put up with you."

It was her first bit of conscious repartee
to her brother-in-law.

Cornish was bending over Di.
170

September

"What next do you say?" he asked.

She lifted her eyes, met his own, held
them. "There's such a lovely, lovely sa-
cred song here," she suggested, and looked
down.

"You like sacred music?"

She turned to him her pure profile, her
eyelids fluttering up, and said: "I love it."

"That's it. So do I. Nothing like a
nice sacred piece," Cornish declared,

Bobby Larkin, at the end of the piano,
looked directly into Di's face.

"Give me ragtime," he said now, with
the effect of bursting out of somewhere.
"Don't you like ragtime?" he put it to her
directly.

Di's eyes danced into his, they sparkled
for him, her smile was a smile for him
alone, all their store of common memories
was in their look.

"Let's try 'My Rock, My Refuge,' "
Cornish suggested. "That's got up real
attractive."

Di's profile again, and her pleased voice
171

Miss Lulu Bett

I
I

saying that this was the very one she had
been hoping to hear him sing.

They gathered for "My Rock, My
Refuge."

"Oh," cried Ina, at the conclusion of this
number, "I'm having such a perfectly beau-
tiful time. Isn't everybody?" everybody's
hostess put it.

"Lulu is," said Dwi^t, and added softly
to Lulu: "She don't have to hear herself
sing."

It was incredible. He was like a bad
boy with a frog. About that photograph
of Ninian he found a dozen ways to torture
her, called attention to it, showed it to
Cornish, set it on the piano facing them all.
Everybody must have understood — except-
ing the Plows. These two gentle souls
sang placidly through the Album of Old
Favourites; and at the melodies smiled hap-
pily upon each other vdth an air from an-
other world. Always it was as if the Flows
walked some fair, inter-peaetrating plane,
from which they looked out as do other
1T2

September

I
I

things not quite of earth, say, flowers and
fire and music.

Strolling home that nigfat, the Plows
were overtaken by scsne one who ran badly,
and as if she were unaccustomed to run-
ning.

"Mis' Plow, Mis' Plow!" this one called,
and Lulu stood beside them.

"Say!" she said. "Do you know of any
job that I could get me? I mean that I'd
know how to do? A job for money. . . .
I mean a job. . . ."

She burst into passionate crying. They
drew her home with them.

Lying awake SMnetime after midnight,
Lulu heard the telephone ring. She heard
Dwight's concerned "Is that so?" And
his cheerful "Be right there."

Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him
tell Ina. In a few moments he ran down
the stairs. Next day they told how Dwight
had sat for hours that night, holding
Grandma Gates so that her haak would
178

Miss Lulu Beit

rest easily and she could fight for her faint
breath. The kind fellow had only ahout
two hours of sleep the whole night long.

Next day there came a message from
that woman who had brought up Dwight —
"made him what he was," he often com-
placently accused her. It was a note on a
postal card— she had often written a few
lines on a postal card to say that she had
sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get her
some samples. Now she wrote a few lines
on a postal card to say that she was going
to die with cancer. Could Dwight and Ina
come to her while she was stUI able to
visit? If he was not too busy. . . .

Nobody saw the pity and the terror of
that postal card. They stuck it up by the
kitchen clock to read over from time to
time, and before they left, Dwight lifted
the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned
the postal card.

And before they left Lulu said : "Dwight
— ^you ofin't tell how long you'U be gone?"

"Of course not. How should I tell!"
174

telli" I

September

"No. And that letter might come while
you're away."

"Conceivably. Letters do come while a
man's awayl"

"Dwight — I thought if you wouldn't
mind if I opened it "

"Opened it?"

"Yes. You see, it'll be about me mostly

"I should have said that it'll be about my
brother mostly."

"But you know what I mean. You
wouldn't mind if I did open it?"

"But you say you know what'U be in it."

"So I did know — till you — I've got to
see that letter, Dwight."

"And so you shall. But not till I show
it to you. My dear Lulu, you know how
I hate having my mail interfered with."

She might have said: "Small souls al-
ways make a point of that." She said noth-
ing. She watched them set off, and kept
her mind on Ina's thousand injunctions.
175

Miss Lulu Bett

"Don't let Di see much of Bobby-
kin. And, Lulu — if it occurs to her
have Mr. Cornish come up to sing, of
course you ask him. You might ask him
to supper. And don't let mother overdo.
And, Lulu, now do watch Monona's hand-
kerchief—the child will never take a clean
one if I'm not here to tell her. . , ."

She breathed injunctions to the very
step of the 'bus.

In the 'bus Dwight leaned forward:

"See that you play post-office squarely.
Lulu!" he called, and threw back his head
and hfted his eyebrows.

In the train he turned tragic eyes to his
wife.

"Ina," he said. "It's ma. And she's go-
ing to die. It can't be. . . ."

Ina said : "But you're going to help her,
Dwight, just being there with her."

It was true that the mere presence of
the man would bring a kind of fresh hfe to
that worn frame. Tact and wisdom and love
Would speak through him and minister.

ire

- Lar- ^H
ler to ^^1

Toward the end of their week's absence
the letter from Ninian came.

Lulu took it from the post-office when
she went for the mail that evening, dressed
in her dark red gown. There was no other
letter, and she carried that one letter in
her hand all through the streets. She passed
those who were surmising what her story-
might be, who were telling one another
what they had heard. But she knew hard-
ly more than they. She passed Cornish in
the doorway of his little music shop, and
spoke with him; and there was the letter.
It was so that Dwight's foster mother's pos-
tal card might have looked on its way to
be mailed.

Cornish stepped down and overtook her.

"Oh, Miss Lulu. I've got a new song
or two "

She said abstractedly: "Do. Any night.

To-morrow night — could you " It was

as if Lulu were too preoccupied to remem-
ber to be ill at ease.

177

Miss Lulu Bett

Cornish flushed witii pleasure, said that I
he could indeed.

"Come for supper," LiJu said.

Oh, could he? Wouldn't that be
Well, say! Such was his acceptance.

He came for supper. And Di was not at
home. She had gone off in the country
with Jenny Mid Bobby, and they merely J
did not return. I

Mrs. Bett and Lulu and Cornish and
Monona supped alone. All were at ease,
now that they were alone. Especially Mrs.
Bett was at ease. It became one of her
young nights, her ahve and lucid nights.
She was there. She sat in Dwight's ohair |
and Lulu sat in Ina's chair. Lulu had!
picked flowers for the table — a task coveted
by her but usually performed by Ina. Lulu
had now picked Sweet William and had
filled a vase of silver gilt taken from the
parlour. Also, Lulu had made ice-cream.

"I don't see what Di can be thinking of,"
Lulu said. "It seems like asking you under
178

September

false " She was afraid of "pretences"

and ended without it,

Cornish savoured his steaming beef pie,
with sage. "Oh, welll" he said content-
edly.

"Kind of a relief, / think, to have her
gone," said Mrs. Bett, from the fuhiess of
something or other.

"Mother 1" Lulu said, twisting her smile.

"Wty, my land, I love her," Mrs. Bett
explained, "but she wiggles and chitters."

Cornish never made the slightest effort,
at any time, to keep a straight face. The
honest fellow now laughed loudly.

"Weill" Lulu thought. "He can't be so
very much in love." And again she
thought; "He doesn't know anything about
the letter. He thinks Ninian got tired of
me." Deep in her heart there abode her
certainty that this was not so.

By some etiquette of consent, Mrs. Bett
cleared the table and Lulu and Cornish
went into the parlour. There lay the let-
ter on the drop-leaf side-table, among the
179

Miss Lulu Bett

shells. Lulu had carried it
she need not see it at her work. The let-
ter looked no more than the advertiscm«it
of dental oflBce furniture beneath it. Mono-
na stood indifferently fingering both.

"Monona," Lulu said sharply, "leare ■
them be!" I

Cornish was displaying his music. "Got
up quite attractive," he said — it was his
formula of praise for his music.

"But we can't try it over," Lulu said, I
"if Di doesn't come." '

"Well, say," said Cornish shyly, "jota
know I left that Album of Old Favourites
here. Some of them we know by heart,"

Lulu looked. "I'll tell you something,"
she said, "there's some of these I can play
with one hand — by ear. Maybe " ■

"Why sure!" said Cornish. I

Lulu sat at the piano. She had on the
wool chally, long sacred to the nights when
she must combine her servant's estate with
the quality of being Ina's sister. She wore
her coral beads and her cameo cross. la
180

' cross, m I

September

her abfience she had caught the trick of
di-essing her hair so that it looked even
more abundant — but she had not dared to
try it so until to-night, when Dwight was
gone. Her long wrist was curved high, her
thin hand pressed and fingered awkwardly,
and at her mistakes her head dipped and
strove to make all right. Her foot ccai-
tinuously touched the lond pedal — the
blurred sound seemed to accomphsh more.
So she played "How Can I Leave Thee,"
and they managed to sing it. So she played
"Long, Long Ago," and "Little Nell of
Narragansett Bay." Beyond open doors,
Mrs. Bett Ustened, sang, it may be, with
them; for when the singers ceased, her
Voice might be heard still humming a loud
closing bar.

"Well!" Cornish cried to Lulu; and then,
in the formal village phrase: "You're quite
a musician."

"Oh, no!" Lulu disclaimed it. She looked
up, flushed, smiling, "I've never done this
in front of anybody," she owned- "I don't
181

Miss Lulu Bett

know what Dwight and Ina'd say. . . ." She |
drooped.

They rested, and, miraculously, the air '
of the place had stirred and quickened, as
if the crippled, halting melody had some
power of its own, and poured this forth, i
even thus trampled.

"I guess you could do 'most anything you I
set your hand to," said Cornish.

"Oh, no," Lulu said again,

"Sing and play and cook "

"But I can't earn anything. I'd like to \
earn something." But this she had not
meant to say. She stopped, rather fright-
ened.

"You would I Why, you have it fine |
here, I thought."

"Oh, fine, yes. Dwight gives me whatJ
I have. And I do their work."

"I see," said Cornish. "I never thought
of that," he added. She caught his specu-
lative look — ^he had heard a tale or two
concerning her return, as who in Waible-
\xm had not heard?

182

"You're wondering why I didn't stay
with him!" Lulu said recklessly. This was
no less than wrung from her, hut its utter-
ance occasioned in her an unspeakahle re-
Kef.

"Oh, no," Cornish disclaimed, and col-
oured and rocked.

"Yes, you are," she swept on. "The

whole town's wondering. Well, I'd like 'em

to know, but Dwight won't let me tell."

b Cornish frowned, trying to understand.

I "'Won't let you]'" he repeated. "I

should say that was your own aflfair."

"No. Not when Dwight gives me all I
have."

"Oh, that " said Cornish. "That's

not right."

"No. But there it is. It puts me — you
see what it does to me. They think — th^
all think my — husband left me."

It was curious to hear her bring out that
word — tentatively, deprecatingly, like some
one dating a foreign phrsae without war-
rwt

Miss Lulu Bett

Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well. . . ."

Before she willed it, she was telling him:

"He didn't. He didn't leave me," ahe

cried with passion. "He had another wife."

Incredibly it was as if she were defending

both him and herself.

"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
She poured it out, in her passion to tell
some one, to share her news of her state
where there would be neither hardness nor
censure.

"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she
said. "We were going to leave for Ore-
gon—going to go through California. We
were in the hotel, and he was going out to
get the tickets. He started to go. Then
he came back. I was sitting the same as
there. He opened the door again — the
same as here. I saw he looked different —
and he said quick: 'There's something you'd
ought to know before we go,' And of
course I said, 'What?' And he said it
right out — how he was married eighteen
years ago and in two years she ran away
184

September

and she must be dead but he wasn't sure.
He hadn't the proofs. So of course I same
hcHue. But it wasn't him left me."

"No, no. Of course he didn't," Cornish

said earnestly. "But Lord sakes " he

said again. He rose to walk about, found
it impracticable and aat down.

"That's what Dwight don't want me to
tell — he thints it isn't true. He thinks —
he didn't have any other wife. He thinks

he wanted " Lulu looked up at him.

"You see," she said, "Dwight thinks he
didn't want me."

"But why don't you make your — ^husband
— ^I mean, why doesn't he write to Mr. Dea-
con here, and tell him the truth " Cor-
nish burst out.

Under this implied belief, she relaxed and
into her face came its rare sweetness.

"He has written," she said. "The let-
ter's there."

He followed her look, scowled at the two
letters.

'What'd he say?"

185

Miss Lulu Bett

"Dwight don't like me to touch his maiL
I'll have to wait till he comes back."

"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.

This time he did rise and walk about. He
wanted to say something, wanted it with
passion. He paused beside Lulu and stam-
mered:

"You — you — you're too nice a girl to get
a deal like this. Darned if you aren't."

To her own complete surprise Lulu's eyes
filled with tears, and she could not speak.
She was by no means above self-sympathy.

"And there ain't," said Cornish sorrow-
fully, "there ain't a thing I can do."

And yet he was doing much. He was
gentle, he was listening, and on his face a
frown of concern. His face ccmtinually
surprised her, it was so fine and alive and
near, by •comparison with Xinian's loose-
lipped, ruddy, impersonal look and
Dwight's thin, hi^-boned hardness. All
the time Cornish gave her something, in-
ste.Hd of drawing upon her. Above all, he
was there, aikd she could talk to him.
186

September

"It's — it's funny," Lulu said. "I'd be
awful glad if I just could know for sure
that the other woman was alive— if I
couldn't know she's dead."

This surprising admission Cornish seemed
to understand.

"Sure you would," he said briefly.

"Cora Waters," Lulu said, "Cora
Waters, of San Diego, California, And
she never heard of me."

"No," Cornish admitted. They stared at
each other as across some abyss.

In the doorway ISIrs. Bett appeared.

"I scraped up everything," she re-
marked, "and left the dishes set."

"That's right, mamma," Lulu said.
"Come and sit down."

Mrs. Bett entered with a leisurely air of
doing the thing next expected of her.

"I don't hear any more playin' and sing-
in'," she remarked. "It sounded real nice."

"We — we sung all I knew how to play,
I guess, mamma."

'I use' to play on the melodeon," Mrs.
18T

Miss Lulu Bett

Bett volunteered, and spread and examined
her right hand.

"Well!" said Cornish.

She now told them about her log-house
in a New England clearing, when she was
a bride. All her store of drama and life
came from her. Slie rehearsed it with far
eyes. She laughed at old delights, drooped
at old fears. She told about her little
daughter who had died at sixteen — a
tragedy such as once would have been re-
newed in a vital ballad. At the end she
yawned frankly as if, in some terrible so-
phistication, she had been telling the story
of some one else.

"Give us one more piece," she said.

"Can we?" Cornish asked.

"I can play 'I Think When I Read That
Sweet Story of Old,' " Lulu said.

"That's the ticket!" cried Cornish,

They sang it, to Lulu's right hand.

"That's the one you picked out when
you was a little girl, Lulie," cried Mrs.
Bett

188

September

Lulu had played

now as she must
have played it then.

Half after nine and Di had not returred.
But nobody thought of Di^ Cornish rose
to go.

"What's them?" Mrs. Bett demanded.

"Dwight's letters, mamma. You mustn't
touch them!" Lulu's voice was sharp.

"Say I" Cornish, at the door, dropped his
voice. "If there was anything I could do
at any time, you'd let me know, wouldn't
you?"

That past tense, those subjunctives, un-
consciously called upon her to feel no in-
trusion.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "You don't
know how good it is to feel "

"Of course it is," said Cornish heartily.

They stood for a moment on the porch.
The night was one of low clamour from
the grass, tiny voices, insisting.

"Of course," said Lulu, "of course you
won't — you wouldn't "

"Say anything?" he divined. "Not for
189

Miss Lulu Bett

dollars. Not," he repeated, "for dollars."

"But I knew you wouldn't," she ttJd
hinu

He took her hand. "Good-night," he
stud. "I've had an awful nice time singing
and listening to you talk — ^well, of course —
I mean," he cried, "the supper was just
fine. And so was the music."

"Oh, no," she said.

Mrs. Bett came into the halL

"L.uhe," she said, "I guess you didn't
notice — this one's from Ninian."

"Mother "

"I opened it — ^why, of course I did. It's
from Ninian."

Mrs. Bett held out the opened envelope
the unfolded letter, and a yellowed news-
paper cUpping.

"See," said the old woman, "says, 'Corie
Waters, music hall singer — ^married last

night to Ninian Deacon ' Say, Lulie,

that must be her. . . ."

Lulu threw out her hands.
190

September

"There!" she cried triumphantly. "He
voas married to her, just like he said!"

The Plows were at breakfast next morn-
ing when Lulu came in casually at the side-
door. Yes, she said, she had had break-
fast. She merely wanted to see them about
something. Then she said nothing, but
sat looking with a troubled frown at Jenny.
Jenny's hair was about her neck, Uke the
hair of a little girl, a south window poured
light upon her, the fruit and honey upon
the table seemed her only possible food.

"You look troubled, Lulu," Mrs. Plow
said. "Is it about getting work?"

"No," said Lulu, "no, I've been places
to ask — quite a lot of places. I guess the
bakery is going to let me make cake."

"I knew it would come to you," Mrs.
Plow said, and Lulu thought that this was
a strange way to speak, when she herself
had gone after the cakes. But she kept
on looking about the room. It was so
bri^t and quiet. As she came in, Mr.
191

Miss L/ulu Bett

Plow had been reading from a bcxjk.
Dwight never read from a book at table.

"I wish " said Lulu, as she looked

at them. But she did not know what she
wished. Certainly it was for no moral ex-
cellence, for she perceived none.

"What is it, Lulu?" >Ir. Plow asked,
and he was bright and quiet too, Lulu
thought.

"Well," said Lulu, "it's not much. But
I wanted Jenny to tell me about last night.**

"Last night?"

"Yes. Would you " Hesitation was

her only way of apology. "Where did you
go?" She turned to Jenny.

Jenny looked up in her clear and ardent
fashion: "We went across the river and^
carried supper and then we came home."

"What time did you get home?"

"Oh, it was still light. Long before
eight, it was."

Lulu hesitated and flushed, asked how
long Di and Bobby had stayed there at
192

September

Jenny's; whereupon she heard that Di had
to be home early on account of Mr. Cor-
nish, so that she and Bobby had not stayed
at all. To which Lulu said an "of course,"
but first she stared at Jenny and so im-
paired the strength of her assent. Almost
at once she rose to go.

"Nothing else?" said Mrs. Plow, catch-
ing that look of hers.

Lulu wanted to say: "My husband was
married before, just as he said he was."
But she said nothing more, and went home.
There she put it to Di, and with her terrible
bluntness reviewed to Di the testimony.

"You were not with Jenny after eight
o'clock. Where were you?" Lulu spoke
formally and her rehearsals were evident.

Di said: "When mamma comes home, I'll
tell her."

With this Lulu had no idea how to deal,
and merely looked at her helplessly. Mrs.
Bett, who was lacing her shoes, now said
casually:

198

"No need to wait till then. Her and
Bobby were out in the side yaxd sitting in
the hammock till all hours."

Di had no answer save her fnrious flush*
and Mrs. Bett went on;

"Didn't I tell you? I knew it before the
company left, but I didn't say a word.
Thinks I, 'She's wiggles and chitters.' So
I left her stay where she was."

"But, mother I" Lulu cried. "You didn't
even tell me after he'd gone."

"I forgot it," Mrs. Bett said, "finding

Ninian's letter and all " She talked of

Ninian's letter.

Di was bright and alert and firm of
flesh and erect before Lulu's softness and
laxness.

"I don't know what your mother'll say,"
said Lulu, "and I don't know what peo-
ple'U think."

"They won't think Bobby and I are tired
of each other, anyTvay," said Di, and
the room.

194

September

Through the day Lulu tried to think
what she must do. About Di she was
anxious and felt without powei She
thought of the indignation of Dwight and
Ina that Di had not been more scrupulous-
ly guarded. She thought of Di's girlish
folly, her irritating independence — -"and
there," Lulu thought, "just the other day
I was teaching her to sew." Her mind
dwelt too on Dwight's furious anger at the
opening of Ninian's letter. But when all
this had spent itself, what was she herself
to do? She must leave his house before
he ordered her to do so, when she told him
that she had confided in Cornish, as tell
she must. But what was she to do? The
bakery cake-making would not give her
a roof.

Stepping about the kitchen in her blue
cotton gown, her hair tight and flat as
seemed proper when one was not dressed,
she thought about these things. And it
was strange: Lulu bore no physical ap-
pearance of one in distress or any anxiety,
195

Miss Lulu Beit

Her head was erect, her movements were
strong and swift, her eyes were interested.
She wp' no drooping Lulu with dragging
step. She was more intent, she was some-
how more operative than she had ever been.

Mrs. Bett was working contentedly be-
side her, and now and then humming an
air of that music of the night before. The
sun surged through the kitchen door and
east window, a returned oriole swung and
fluted on the elm above the gable. Wagons
clattered by over the rattling wooden block
pavement.

"Ain't it nice with nobody home?" Mrs.
Bett remarked at intervals, like the bur-
den of a comic song.

"Hush, mother," Lulu said, troubled, her
ethical refinements conflicting with her
honesty.

"Speak the truth and shame the devil,"
Mrs. Bett contended.

When dinner was ready at noon, Di did
not appear. A Httle earlier Lulu had heard
Iier moving about her room, and she serred
196

September

her in expectation that she would join
them.

"Di must be having the 'tantrim' this
time," she thought, and for a time said
nothing. But at length she did say: "Why
doesn't Di come? I'd better put her plate
in the oven."

Rising to do so, she was arrested by her
mother. ISIrs. Bett was eating a baked
potato, holding her fork close to the tines,
and presenting a profile of passionate ab-
sorption.

"Why, Di went off," she said.

"Went o£Fl"

"Down the walk. Down the sidewalk."

"She must have gone to Jenny's," said
Lulu. "I wish she wouldn't do that with-
out telling me."

Monona laughed out and shook her
straight hair. "She'll catch itl" she cried
in sisterly enjoyment.

It was when Lulu had come back from
the kitchen and was seated at the table that
Mrs. Bett observed:

197

Miss Lulu Bett

"I didn't think Inie'd want ber to take
ber nice new satcheL"

"Her satcheir

"Yes, InJe wouldn't take it north her-
self, but Di had it"

"3Iother," said Lulu, "when Di went
away just now, was she carrying a satrfiel?"

"Didn't I just tell youf' Mrs. Bett de-
manded, aggrieved. "I said I didn't think
Inie "

"Mother! Which way did she go!**

Monona pointed with her spoon. "She
went that way," she said. "I seen her."

Lulu looked at the clock. For Mcmma
had pointed toward the railway station.
The twelve-thirty train, which every one
took to the city for shopping, would be
just about leaving.

"Monona," said Lulu, "dtm't you go out
of the yard while I'm gone. Mother, yoa
keep her "

Lulu ran from the house and up the
street. She was in her blue cotton dress,
her old shoes, she was hatless and without
198

September

money. When she was still two or three
blocks from the station, she heard the
twelve-thirty "pulling out."

She ran badly, her ankles in their low,
loose shoes continually turning, her arms
held taut at her sides. So she came down
the platform, and to the ticket window. The
contained ticket man, wonted to lost trains
and perturbed faces, yet actually ceased
counting when he saw her:

"Lenny I Did Di Deacon take that
train?"

"Sure she did," said Lenny.

"And Bobby Larkin?" Lulu cared noth-
ing for appearances now.

"He went in on tne Local," said Lenny,
and his eyes widened.

"Where?"

"See." Lenny thought it through. "Mill-
ton," he said. "Yes, sure, Millton. Both
of 'em."

"How long till another train?"

"Well, sir," said the ticket man, "you're
in luck, if you was goin' too. Seventeen
190

Miss Lulu Bett

was late this morning — she'll be along, jerk
of a lamh's tail."

"Then," said Lulu, "you got to give me
a ticket to Millton, without me paying till
after — and you got to lend me two dol-
lars."

"Sure thing," said Lenny, with a man-l
ner of laying the entire railway system at
her feet.

"Seventeen" would rather not have
stopped at Warbleton, but Lenny's signal
was law on the time card, and the mag-
nificent yellow express slowed down for
Lulu. Hatless and in her blue cottOTi
gown, she climbed aboard.

Then her old inefficiency seized upon
her. What was she going to do? Millton 1
She had been there but once, years ago —
how could she ever find anybody? Why
had she not stayed in Warbleton and asked
the sheriff or somebody — ^no, not the
sheriff. Cornish, perhaps. Oh, and Dwight
and Ina were going to be angry now ! And
Di— little Di. As Lulu thought of her slu
20G

Lcr sh^^^

September

began to cry. She said to herself that she
had taught Di to sew.

In sight of Millton, Lulu was seized
with trembling and physical nausea. She
had never been alone in any unfamiliar
town. She put her hands to her hair and
for the first time realized her roUed-up
sleeves. She was pulling down these
sleeves when the conductor came through
the train.

"Could you tell me," she said timidly,
"the name of the principal hotel in Mill-
' ton?"

Ninian had asked this as they neared Sa-
vannah, Georgia.

The conductor looked curiously at her.

"Why, the Hess House," he said-
"Wasn't you expecting anybody to meet
you?" he asked, kindly.

"No," said Lulu, "but I'm going to find
TDj folks " Her voice trailed away.

"Beats all," thought the conductor, using
his utility formula for the universe.

In MiiUon Lulu's inquiry for the Hess
I 201

Miss Lulu JSett

House produced no consternation. Nobody
paid any attention to her. She was almost
certainly taken to be a new servant there.

"You stop feeling so!" she said to her-
self angrily at the lobby entrance. "Ain't
you been to that big hotel in Savannah,
Georgia?"

The Hess House, Millton, had a tradi-
tion of its own to maintain, it seemed, and
they sent her to the rear basement door.
She obeyed meekly, hut she lost a good deal
of time before she found herself at the
end of the office desk. It was still longer
before any one attended her.

"Please, sir I" she burst out. "See if Di
Deacon has put her name on your book."

Her appeal was tremendous, compelling.
The young clerk listened to her, showed
her where to look in the register. When
only strange names and strange writing
presented themselves there, be said:

"Tried the parlour?"

And directed her kindly and with his

thumb, and in the other hand a pen di-

202

September

vorced from his ear for the express pur-
pose.

In crossing- the lobby in the hotel at
Savannah, Georgia, Lulu's most pressing
problem had been to know where to look.
But now the idlers in the Hess House lobby
did not exist. In time she found the door
of the intensely rose-coloured reception
room. There, in a fat, rose-coloured chair,
beside a. cataract of lace curtain, sat Di,
alone.

Lulu entered. She had no idea what to

»say. ^^^len Di looked up, started up,
frowned, Imlu felt as if she herself were
the culprit. She said the first thing that
occurred to her:

"I don't beheve mamma'll like your tak-
ing her nice satchel."

"Weill" said Di, exactly as if she had

been at home. And superadded : "My

goodnessi" And then cried rudely: "What

axe you here for?"

"For you," said Lulu. "You — -you—

^^^ou'd ought not to be here, Di."

^^ 203

Miss Lulu Bett

"^ATiat's that to you?" Di cried,

"Why, Di, you're just a little girl '*

Lulu saw that this was all wrong, and
stopped miserably. How was she to go
on? "Di," she said, "if you and Bobby
want to get married, why not let us get
you up a nice wedding at home?" And she
saw that tliis sounded as if she were talk-
ing about a tea-party.

"Who said we wanted to be married?"

"Well, he's here."

"Who said he's here?"

"Isn't he?"

Di sprang up. "Aunt Lulu," she said,
"you're a funny person to be telling me
what to do."

Lulu said, flushing: "I love you just the
same as if I was married happy, in a
home."

"Well, you aren't!" cried Di cruelly, "and
I'm going to do just as I think best."

Lulu thought this over, her look grave
Mid sad. She tried to find something to
204

September

say. "What do people say to people," she
wondered, "when it's like this?"

"Getting married is for your whole Hfe,"
was all that came to her.

"Yours wasn't," Di flashed at her.

Lulu's colour deepened, but there seemed
to be no resentment in her. She must deal
with this right — that was what her manner
seemed to say. And how should she deal?

"Di," she cried, "come back with me —
and wait till mamma and papa get home."

"That's likely. They say I'm not to be
married till I'm twenty-one."

"Well, but how young that isl"

"It is to you."

'T)il This is wrong — it is wrong."

"There's nothing wrong about getting
married— if you stay married."

"Well, then it can't be wrong to let them
know.'*

"It isn't. But they'd treat me wrong.
They'd make me stay at home. And I
won't stay at home — I won't stay there.
They act as if I was ten years old."
205

Miss Lulu Bett

Abruptly in Lulu's face there came a
light of understanding.

"Wliy, Di," she said, "do you feel that
way too?"

Di missed this. She went on:

"I'm grown up. I feel just as grown
up as they do. And I'm not allowed to do
a thing I feel. I want to be away — I will
be away

"I know about that part," Lulu said.

She now looked at Di with attention.
Was it possible that Di was suffering in the
air of that home as she herself suffered?
She had not thought of that. There Di
had seemed so young, so dependent, so —
asquirm. Here, by herself, waiting for
Bobby, in the Hess House at MlUton, she
was curiously adult. Would she be adult
if she were let alone?

"You don't know what it's like," Di
cried, "to be hushed up and laughed at
and paid no attention to, everything you

"Don't I?" said Lulu.
206

I
I

"Don't I?" ^^

September

She was breathing quickly and looking
at Di. If this was why Di was leaving
home. . . .

"But, Di," she cried, "do you love Bobby
Larkin?"

By this Di was embarrassed. "I've got
to marry somebody," she said, "and it
might as well be him."

"Sut is it him?"

"Yes, it is," said Di. "But," she added,
"I know I could love almost anybody real
nice that was nice to me." Ami this she
said, not in her own right, but either she
had picked it up somewhere and adopted
it, or else the terrible modernity and hon-
esty of her day somehow spoke through
her, for its own. But to Lulu it was as
if something familiar turned its face to
be recognised.

"Dil" she cried.

"It's true. You ought to know that."
She waited for a moment. "You did it,"
she added. "Mamma said so."
207

Miss Lulu Bett

At this onslaught Lulu was stupefied.
For she began to perceive its truth.

"I know what I want to do, I guess,"
Di muttered, as If to try to cover what
she had said.

Up to that moment, Lulu had been feel-
ing intensely that she understood Di, but
that Di did not know this. Now Lulu felt
that she and Di actually shared some un-
suspected sisterhood. It was not only that
they were both badgered by Dwight. It
was more than that. They were two women.
And siie must make Di know that she
understood her.

"Di," Lulu said, breathing hard, "what
you just said is true, I guess. Don't you
think I don't know. And now I'm going
to tell you "

She might have poured it all out, claimed
her kinship with Di by virtue of that which
had happened in Savannah, Georgia. But
Di said:

"Here come some ladies. And goodness,
look at the way you look!"
208

September

Lulu glanced down. "I know," she
said, "but I guess you'll have to put up
with me."

The two women entered, looked about
with the complaisance of those who ex-
amine a hotel property", find criticism in-
cumbent, and have no errand. These two
women had outdressed their occasion. In
their presence Di kept silence, turned away
her head, gave them to know that she had
nothing to do with this blue cotton person
beside her. When they had gone on, "WHiat
do you mean by my having to put up with
you?" Di asked sharply.

"I mean I'm going to stay with you."

Di laughed scornfully— she was again
the rebellious child. "I guess Bobby'll hav(
something to say about that," she said in'
solently.

"They left you in my charge."

"But I'm not a baby — the idea. Aim!-
Lulu!"

"I'm going to stay right with you," said
Lulu. She wondered what she should do
200

Miss Ldtlu Bett

us getting married, but she can't. I've told
her so."

"She don't have to stop us," quoth Bobby
gloomilj', "we're stopped."

"What do you mean?" Di laid one hand
flatly along her cheek, instinctive in her
melodrama.

Bobby drew down his brows, set his hand
on his leg, elbow out.

"We're minors," said he.

"Well, gracious, you didn't have to tell
them that."

"No. They knew I was."

"But, Silly! Why didn't you tell them
you're not?"

"But I am."

Di stared. "For pity sakes," she said,
"don't you know how to do anything?"

"What would you have me do?" he in-
quired indignantly, with his head held very
stiff, and with a boyish, admirable lift of chin.

"Why, tell thera we're both twenty-one.

We look it. We know we're responsible

212

September

— that's all they care for. Well, you are
ft funny . . ."

"You wanted me to lie?" he said,

"Oh, don't make out you never told a
fib."

"Well, but this " he stared at her.

"I never heard of such a thing," Di
cried accusingly.

"Anyhow," he said, "there's notliing to
do now. The cat's out. I've told our ages.
We've got to have our folks in on it."

"Is that all you can tliink of?" she de-
manded.

"What else?"

"Why, come on to Bainbridge or Holt,
and tell them we're of age, and be mar-
ried there."

"Di," said Bobby, "why, that'd be a
rotten go."

Di said, oh very well, if he didn't want
to marry her. He replied stonily that of
course he wanted to marry her. Di stuck
out her httle hand. She was at a disad-
vantage. She could use no arts, with Lulu
213

Miss Lulu Bett

sitting there, looking on. "Well, then,
come on to Bainbridge," Di cried, and rose.

Lulu was thinking: "What shall I say?
I don't know what to say. I don't know
what I can say." Kow she also rose, and.
laughed awkwardly. "I've told Di," she
said to Bobby, "that wherever you two go,
I'm going too. Di's folks left her in my
care, you know. So you'll have to take
me along, I guess." She spoke in a man-
ner of distinct apology.

At this Bobby had no idea what to re-
ply. He looked down miserably at the
carpet. His whole manner was a mute
testimony to his participation in the eternal
query: How did I get into it?

"Bobby," said Di, "are you going to let
her lead you home?"

This of course nettled him, hut not in
the manner on which Di had counted. He
said loudly:

"I'm not going to Bainbridge or Holt or
any town and lie, to get you or any other
girl"

21&

I
I

September

Di's head lifted, tossed, turned from him.
"You're about as much like a man in a
story," she said, "as — as papa is."

The two idly inspecting women again en-
tered the rose room, this time to stay. They
inspected Lulu too. And Lulu rose and
stood between the lovers.

"Hadn't we all better get the four-thirty
to Warbleton?" she said, and swallowed.

"Oh, if Bobby wants to back out "

said Di.

"I don't want to back out," Bobby con-
tended furiously, "b-h-but I won't "

"Come on. Aunt Lulu," said Di grand-

ly.

Bobby led the way through the lobby, Di
followed, and Lulu brought up tlie rear.
She walked awkwardly, eyes down, her
hands stiffly held. Heads turned to look
at her. They passed into the street.

"You two go ahead," said Lulu, "so {hey
won't think "

They did so, and she followed, and did
215

Miss Lulu Beit

not know where to look, and thought of he]
broken shoes.

At the station, Bobby put tl
train and stepped back. He had, he said,
something to see to there in Millton. Dia
did not look at him. And Lulu's goot
bye spoke her genuine regret for all.

"Aunt Lulu," said Di, "you needn't
think I'm going to sit with you. You look
as if you were crazy. I'll sit back here,"

"All right, Di," said Lulu humbly.

It was nearly six o'clock when they i
rived at the Deacons'. Mrs. Bett stood <
the porch, her hands rolled in her apron.

"Surprise for youl" she called brightly.

Before they had reached the door,
bounded from the hall.

"Darling!"

She seized upon Di, kissed her loudly,
drew back from her, saw the travelling bag,

"My new bagl" she cried. "Di! Wha*
have you got that for?"
216

[oo^^l

;dn't
look

1 aa

PMq Ir Aiit.

LULU AND MRS. BETT DISCUSS THE SITUATION.

September

In any embarrassment Di's instinctive
defence was hearty laughter. She now
laughed heartily, kissed her mother again,
and ran up the stairs.

Lulu slipped hy her sister, and into the
kitchen.

"WeU, where have you heen?" cried Ina,
"I declare, I never saw such a family.
Mamma don't know anything and neither
of you will tell anything."

"Mamma knows a-plenty," snapped Mrs.
Bett.

Monona, who was eating a sticky gift,
jumped stiffly up and down.

"You'll catch it — you'll catch it I" she
sent out her shrill general warning.

Mrs. Bett followed Lulu to the kitchen:
"I didn't tell Inie about her hag and now
she says I don't know nothing," she com-
plained. . "There I knew about the hag
tlie hull time, but I wasn't going to tell
her and spoil her gettin' home." She
banged the stove-griddle. "I've a good no*

8ir

Miss Lulu Bett

tion not to eat a mouthful o' supper,"
announced.

"Mother, pleasel" said Lulu passifmately.
"Stay here. Help me. I've got enough
to get through to-night."

Dwight had come home. Lulu could
hear Ina pouring out to him the mysterious
circumstance of the bag, could hear the
exaggerated air of the casual with which
he always received the excitement of an-
other, and especially of his Ina. Then she
heard Ina's feet padding up the stairs, and
after that Di's shrill, nervous laughter.
Lulu felt a pang of pity for Di, as if she _
herself were about to face them.

There was not time both to prepare sup
per and to change the blue cotton dress. '
In that dress Lulu was pouring water when
Dwight entered the dining-room.

"Ah I" said he. "Our festive ball-gown."

She gave him her hand, with her peculiar
sweetness of expression — almost as if she
were sorry for him or were bidding him
good-bye.

K18

September

"That shows who you dress for!" he
cried. "You dress for me, Ina, aren't you
jealous? Lulu dresses for mel"

Ina had come in with Di, and both were
excited, and Ina's head was moving stiffly,
as in all her indignations. Mrs. Bett had
thought better of it and had given her prea-
enee. Already Monona was singing.

"Lulu," said Dwight, "really? Can't
you run up and slip on another dress?"

Lulu sat down in her place. "'No" she
said. "I'm too tired. I'm sorry, Dwight."
I "It seems to me " he began.

"I don't want any," said Monona.

But no one noticed Monona, and Ina did
not defer even to Dwight. She, who meas-
ured delicate, troy occasions by avoirdupois,
I said brightly:

"Now, Di. You must tell us all about
it. Where had you and Aunt Lulu been
with mamma's new bag?"

"Aunt Lulu I" cried Dwight. "Ahal So
Aunt Lulu was along. Well now, that
alters it."

219

Miss Lulu Bett

"How does it?" asked his Ina crossly.

"Why, when Aunt Lulu goes on a
jaunt," said Dwight Herbert, "events be-
gin to event."

"Come, Di, let's hear," said Ina.

"Ina," said Lulu, "first can't we hear
something about your visit? How is "

Her eyes consulted Dwight. His features
dropped, the lines of his face dropped, its
muscles seemed to sag. A look of suffer-
ing was in his eyes.

"She'll never be any better," he said. "I
know we've said good-bye to her for the
last time."

"Oh, Dwight!" said Lulu.

"She knew it too," he said. "It — ^it put
me out of business, I can tell you. She
gave me my start — -she took all the care
of me — taught me to read — she's the only

mother I ever knew " He stopped, and

opened his eyes wide on account of their
dimness.

"They said she was like another person
while Dwight was there," said Ina, and
220

September

entered upon a length of particulars, and
details of the journey. These details Dwight
interrupted: Couldn't Lulu remember that
he liked sage on the chops? He could
hardly taste it. He had, he said, told her
this thirty-seven times. And when she said
that she was sorry, "Perhaps you think I'm
sage enough," said the witty fellow.

"Dwightie!" said Ina. "Mercy." She
shook her head at him. "Now, Di," she
went on, keeping the thread all this time.
"Tell us your story. About the bag."

"Oh, mamma," said Di, "let me eat my
supper."

"And so you shall, darling. TeU it in
your own way. Tell us first what you've
done since we've been away. Did Mr. Corn-
ish come to see you?"

"Yes," said Di, and flashed a look at
Lulu.

But eventually they were back again be-
fore that new black bag. And Di would
say nothing. She laughed, squirmed, grew
irritable, laughed again.
221

Miss Lulu Bett

"Lulu!" Ina demanded. "You "were witb
heir — where in the world had you been?
"Why, but you couldn't have been with her
— in that dress. And yet I saw you come
in the gate together."

"Whatl" cried Dwight Herbert, drawing
down his brows. "You certainly did not
so far forget us. Lulu, as to go on the
street in that dress?"

"It's a good dress," IVIrs. Bett now said
positively. "Of course it's a good dress.
Lulie wore it on the street — of course she
did. She was gone a long time. I made
me a cup o' tea, and ihen she hadn't come."

"Well," said Ina, "I never heard any-
thing like this before. Where were you

bothr*

One would say that Ina had entered into
the family and been bom again, identified
with each one. Xolhing escaped her.
Dwight, too, his intimac)- was incredible.

"Put an end to this. Lulu," he com-
manded. "^Tiere were you two — since you
make such a mvsterv?"

September

Di's look at Lulu was piteous, terrified.
Di's fear of her father was now clear to
Lulu. And Lulu feared him too. Abruptly
she heard herself temporising, for the
moment making common cause with Di.

"Oh," she said, "we have a little secret.
Can't we have a secret if we want one?"

"Upon my word," Dwight commented,
"she has a beautiful secret. I don't know
about your secrets. Lulu."

Every time that he did this, that fleet,
lifted look of Lulu's seemed to bleed,

"I'm glad for my dinner," remarked
Monona at last. "Please excuse me." On
that they all rose. Lulu stayed in the
kitchen and did her best to make her tasks
indefinitely last. She had nearly finished
when Di burst in.

"Aunt Lulu, Aunt Lulu!" she cried.
"Come in there — come. I can't stand it.
I What am I going to do?"

"Di, dear," said Lulu. "Tell your mother
—you must tell her."

"She'll cry," Di sobbed. "Then she'll
223

Miss Lulu Bett

tell papa — and he'll never stop talking about
it. I know him — every day he'll keep it
going. After he scolds me it'll be a joke
for months. I'll die — I'll die. Aunt Lulu."

Ina's voice sounded in the kitchen. "What
are you two whispering about? I declare,
mamma's hurt, Di, at the T'ny you're act-
ing ... "

"Let's go out on the porch," said Lulu,
and when Di would have escaped, Ina drew
her with them, and handled the situation in
the only way that she knew how to handle
it, by complaining: Well, but what in this
world . . .

Lulu threw a white shawl about her blue
cotton dress.

"A bridal robe," said Dwight. "How's
that. Lulu — ^what are you wearing a bridal
robe for — eh?"

She smiled dutifully. There was no need
to make him angry, she reflected, before she
must. He had not yet gone into the pMr-
lour— had not yet asked for his mail.

It was a warm dusk, moonless, windless.
224

September

The sounds of the village street came in —
laughter, a touch at a piano, a chiming clock.
Lights starred and quickened in the blurred
houses. Footsteps echoed on the board
walks. The gate opened. The gloom
yielded up Cornish.

Lulu was inordinately glad to see him.
To have the strain of the time broken by
him was like hearing, on t, lonely winter
wakening, the clock strike reassuring dawn.

"Lulu," said Dwight low, "your dress.
Do go I"

Lulu laughed. "The bridal shawl takes
* off the curse," she said.

Cornish, in his gentle way, asked about
the journey, about the sick woman — and
Dwight talked of her again, and this time
his voice broke. Di was curiously silent.
When Cornish addressed her, she replied
simply and directly^-the rarest of Di's
manners, in fact not Di's manner at all.
Lulu spoke not at all — it was enough to
have this respite.

After a little the gate opened again. It
225

^s Lulu Bett

was Bobby. In ibe besetting fear that be
was leaving Di to face something alone,
Bobby had arrived.

And now Di's spirits rose. To her his
presence meant repentance, recapitulation-
Her laugh rang out, her replies came aich-
ly. But Bobby was plainly not playing up.
Bobby was, in fact, hardly less than glum.
It was Dwight, the irrepressible fellow, who
kept the talk going. And it was no less
than deft, his continuously displayed ability
playfully to pierce Lulu. Some one bad
"married at the drop of the hat. Yoa
know the kind of girl?" And some one
"made up a likely story to soothe her own
pride — you know how they do that?"

""Well," said Ina, "my part, I think the
most awful thing is to have somebody one
loves keep secrets from one. Xo wonder
folks get crabbed and spiteful with such
treatment."

"Mamma!" Monona shouted from her
room. "Come and hear me say my
prayers r'

226

Monona entered this request with pre-
cisicxi on Ina's nastiest moments, but she
always rose, unabashed, and went, motherly
and dutiful, to hear devotions, as if that
function and the process of living ran
their two divided channels.

She had dispatched tliis errand and was
returning when Mrs. Bett crossed the lawn
from Grandma Gates's, where the old lady
had taken comfort in Mrs. Bett's ministra-
tions for an hour.

"Don't you help me," Mrs. Bett warned
them away sharply. "I guess I can help
myself yet awhile."

She gained her chair. And still in her
momentary rule of attention, she said
clearly:

"I got a joke. Grandma Gates says it's
all over town Di and Bobby Larkin eloped
off together to-day. He!" The last was
a single note of laughter, high and brief.

The silence fell.

"What nonsense 1" Dwigbt Herbert said
angrily.

227

Miss Liulu Bett

But Ina said tensely: "Is it nonsense?
Haven't I been tn-ing and trying to find
out where the black satchel went? Di!"

Di's laughter rose, but it sounded thin
and false.

"Listen to that, Bobby," she said.
"Listen I"

"That won't do, Di," said Ina. "You
can't deceive mamma and don't you tryr'
Her voice trembled, she was frantic with
loving and authentic anxiety, but she was
without power, she overshadowed the real
gravity of the mtMnent by her indignation.

"Jlrs. Deacon " began Bobby, and

stood up, very straight and manly before
them all.

But Dwight intervened, Dwight, the
father, the master of his house. Here was
something requiring him to act. So the
father set his face like a mask and brought
down his hand cm the rail of the porch. It
was as if the sound shattered a thousand
filaments — where ?

"Diana!" his voice was terrible, demanded
a response, ravened among them.

"Yes, papa," said Di, very small.

"Answer your mother. Answer mc. Is
there anything to this absurd tale?"

"No, papa," said Di, trembling.

"Nothing whatever?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Can you imagine how such a ridiculous
report started?"

"No^ papa."

"Very well. Now we know where we
are. If anyone hears this report repeated,
send them to me"

"Well, but that satchel " said Ina, to

whom an idea manifested less as a function
than as a leech.

"One moment," said Dwight. "Lulu will
of course verify what the child has said."

There had never been an adult moment
until that day when Lulu had not in-
stinctively taken the part of the parents,
of all parents. Now she saw Dwight's
cruelty to her as his cruelty to Di; she saw
I 229

Miss LmIu Bett

Ina. herself a child in maternity, as igno-
rant of how to deal with the moment as was
Dwight. She saw Di's falseness partly
parented by these parents. She burned at
the enormity of Dwight's appeal to her for
verification. She threw up her head and
no one had ever seen Lulu look like this.

"If you cannot settle this with Di," said
Lulu, "you cannot settle it with me."

"A shifty answer," said Dwight, "You
have a genius at misrepresenting facts, you
know. Lulu."

"Bobby wanted to say SMnething," said
Ina, still troubled.

"No, Mrs. Deacon," said Bobby, low. "I
have nothing — more to say."

In a little while, when Bobby went away,
Di walked with him to the gate. It was as
if, the worst having happened to her, she
dared everything now.

"Bobby," she said, "you hate a he. But
what else could I do?"

He could not see her, could see only the
little moon of her face, blurring.
230

I
I

September

"And anyhow," said Di, "it wasn't a lie.
We didn't elope, did we?"

"What do you think I came for to-night?"
asked Bobby.

The day had aged him; he spoke Uke a
man. His very voice came gruffly. But
she saw nothing, softened to him, yielded,
was ready to take his regret that ^ey had
not gone on.

"Well, I came for one thing," said Bobby,
"to tell you that I couldn't stand for your
wanting me to lie to-day. Why, Di — I hate

a lie. And now to-night " He spoke

his code almost beautifully. "I'd rather,"
he said, "they had never let us see each
other again than to lose you the way I've
lost you now."

"Bobby 1"

"It's true. We mustn't talk about it."

"Bobby! I'll go back and tell them all."

"You can't go back," said Bobby. "Not
out of a thing like that."

She stood staring after him. She heard
281

Miss Lulu Bett

some one coming and she turned towardi
the house, and met Cornish leaving.

"Miss Di," he cried, "if you're going to
elope with anybody, remember it's with
me!"

Her defence was ready — ^her laughter
rang out so that the departing Bobby might
hear.

She came back to the steps and mounted
slowly in the lamphght, a little white thing
with whom birth had taken exquisite pains.

"If," she said, "if you have any fear
that I may ever elope with Bobby Larkin,
let it rest. I shall never marry him if he
asks me fifty times a day."

"Really, darling?" cried Ina.

"Really and truly," said Di, "and he
knows it, too."

Lulu listened and read all.

"I wondered," said Ina pensively, "I
wondered if you wouldn't see that Bobby
isn't much beside that nice Mr. Cornish!"

When Di had gone upstairs, Ina said to
Lulu in a manner of cajoling confidence:

September

"Sister " she rarely called her that,

"why did you and Di have the black bag?"

So that after all it was a reUef to Lulu
to hear Dwight ask casually:

"By the way, Lulu, haven't I got some
mail somewhere about?"

"There are two letters on the parlour
table," Lulu answered. To Ina she added:
"Let's go in the parlour."

As they passed through the haU, Mrs.
Bett was going up the stairs to bed — when
she mounted stairs she stooped her shoul-
ders, bunched her extremities, and bent her
head. Lulu looked after her, as if she
were half minded to claim the protection so
long lost.

Dwight lighted the gas. "Better turn

I down the gas jest a little," said he, tire-
le:
sa
:

Lulu handed him the two letters. He
saw Ninian's writing and looked up, said
"A-hal" and held it while he leisurely read

Miss Lulu Beit

the advertisement of dental furniture, his
Ina reading over his shoulder. "A-ha!"
he said again, and with designed delibera-
tion turned to Ninian's letter. "An epistle
from my dear brother Ninian." The words
failed, as he saw the unsealed flap.

"You opened the letter?" he inquired in-
credulously. Fortunately he had no cli-
maxes of furious calm for high occasions.
All had been used on small occasions. "You
opened the letter" came in a tone of no
deeper horror than "You picked the flower"
— once put to Luiu.

She said nothing. As it is impossible to
continue looking indignantly at some one
who is not looking at you, Dwight turned
to Ina, who was horror and sympathy, a
nice half and half.

"Your sister has been opening my mail,"
he said.

"But, Dwight, if it's from Ninian "

"It is my mail," he reminded her. "She
bad asked me if she might open it. Of
course I told her no."
284

September

"Well," said Ina practically, "what does

sayf

"I shall open the letter in my own time.
My present concern is this disregard of
my wishes." His self-control was perfect,
ridiculous, devilish. He was self -controlled
because thus he could be more effectively
cruel than in temper. "What excuse have
you to offer?"

Lulu was not looking at him. "None,"
she said — ^not defiantly, or ingratiatingly,
or fearfully. Merely, "Ncme."

"Why did you do it?"

She smUed faintly and shook her head.

"Dwight," said Ina, reasonably, "she
! knows what's in it and we don't. Hurry
up."

"She is," said Dwight, after a pause,
"an ungrateful woman."

He opened the letter, saw the clipping,
the avowal, with its facts.

"A-hal" said he. "So after having been
absent with my brother for a month, you

Cou were not married to him."

Miss Ldilu Bett

Lulu spoke her exceeding triumph,
"You see, Dwight," she said, "he told
the truth. He had another wife. He didn't

just leave me."

Dwight instantly cried: "But this seems
to me to make you considerably worse <^
than if he had."

"Oh, no," Lulu said serenely. "Xo,
Why," she said, "you know how it all
came about. He — ^he was jsed to thinking
of his wife as dead. If he hadn't — hadn't
hked me, be wouldn't have told me. You
see that, don't you?"

Dwight laughed. "That your apology!"
he asked.

She said nothing.

"Look here, Lulu," he went on, "this is
a bad business. The less you say about it
the better, for all our sakes — you see that,
don't you?"

"See that? Why, no. I wanted you to
write to him so I could tell the truth. You
said I mustn't tell the truth till I had the
proofs ..."

September

"Tell who?"

"Tell everybody. I want them to know."

"Then you care nothing for our feelings
in this matter?"

She looked at him now. "Your feel-
ing?"

"It's nothing to you that we have a
brother who's a bigamist?"

"But it's me — it's me."

"You! You're completely out of it.
Just let it rest as it is and it'U drop."

"I want the people to know the truth,"
Lulu said.

"But it's nobody's business but our busi-
ness! I take it you don't intend to sue
Ninian?"

"Sue him? Oh no!"

"Then, for all our sakes, let's drop the
matter."

Lulu had fallen in one of her old atti-
tudes, tense, awkward, her hands awkward-
ly placed, her feet twisted. She kept put-
ting a lock back of her ear, she kept swal-
lowing.

237

Miss Lulu Bett

"Tell you. Lulu," said Dwight. "Here
are three of us. Our interests are the same
in this thing — only Ninian is our relative
and he's nothing to you now. Is he?"

"Why, no," said Lulu in surprise.

"Very well. Let's have a vote. Your
snap judgment is to tell this disgraceful
fact broadcast. Mine is, least said, soonest
mended. What do you say, Ina — con-
sidering Di and all?"

"Oh, goodness," said Ina, "if we get
mixed ui> with bigamy, we'll never get
away from it. Why, I wouldn't have it
told for worlds."

Still in that twisted position. Lulu looked
up at her. Her straying hair, her parted
lips, her lifted eyes were singularly pathetic.

"My poor, poor sister!" Ina said. She
struck together her little plump hands. "Oh,
Dwight— when I think of it: What have
I done — what have tve done that I should
have a good, kind, loving husband — be so
protected, so loved, when other women. . . .
DarlingI" she sobbed, and drew near to
288

"You know how sorry I am—

Lulu stood up. The white shawl slipped
to the floor. Her hands were stiffly joined.

"Then," she said, "give me the only thing
I've got — that's my pride. My pride —
that he didn't want to get rid of me."

They stared at her. "What about my
pride?" Dwight called to her, as across
great distances. "Do you think I want
everybody to know my brother did a thing
like that?"

"You can't help that," said Lulu.

"But I want you to help it. I want you
to promise me that you won't shame us like
this before all our friends."

"You want me to promise what?"
* "I want you — I ask you," Dwight said
with an effort, "to promise me that you
will keep this, with us — a family secret."

"Nol" Lulu cried. "No. I won't do itl
I won't do itl I won't do it!"

It was like some crude chant, knowing
only two tcmes. She threw out her hands.

Miss LaUu Bett

ber wrists long and dark on her blue skirt.
"Can't you understand anj-thingT' she
asked. "I've lived here all my life — on
your money. I've not been strong enough
to work, they say — well, but I've been
strong enough to be a hired girl in your
house — and I've been glad to pay for my
keep. . . . But there wasn't anything about
it I liked. Nothing about being here that
I liked. . . . Well, then I got a little
swnething, same as other folks. I thought
I was married and I went off on the train
and he bought me things and I saw the
different towns. And then it was all a mis-
take. I didn't have any of it, I came
back here and went into your kdtehen again
— I don't know why I came back. I s'pose_
because I'm most thirty-four and new
things ain't so easy any more — ^but what
have I got or what'U I ever have? And
now you want to put (m to me having
folks look at me and think he run off and
left me, and having 'em all wonder. . . .
240

September

X can't stand it I can't stand it. I
can't. ..."

"You'd rather they'd know he fooled you,
when he had another wife?" Dwight
Mieered.

"Yes I Because he wanted me. How do
I know — ^maybe he wanted me only just be-
cause he was lonesome, the way I was. I
don't care why I And I won't haye folks
think he went and left me."

"That," said Dwight, "is a wicked
vanity."

"That's the truth. Well, why can't they
know the truth?"

"And bring disgrace on us all."

"It's me — it's me " Lulu's individual-
ism strove against that terrible tribal sense,
was shattered by it.

"It's all of usl" Dwight boomed. "It's
Di."

"Di?" He had Lulu's eyes now.

"Why, it's chiefly on Di's account that
I'm talking," said Dwight.

"How would it hurt Di?"
241

Miss Lulu Bett

"My sweet, setf-sacrificing sister," she
murmured,

"Oh stop that!" Lulu said.

Dwight took her hand, lying limply in
his. "I can now," he said, "overlook the
matter of the letter." i

Lulu drew hack. She put her hair he- .
hind her ears, swallowed, and cried out.

"Don't you go around pitying me I I'll
have you know I'm glad the whole thing
happened 1"

Cornish had ordered six new copies of a
popular song. He knew that it was popular
because it was called so in a Chicago pa-
per. When the six copies arrived with a.
danseuse on the covers he read the "words,"
looked wistfully at the symbols which shut
him out, and felt well pleased.

"Got up quite attractive," he thought,
and fastened the sis copies in the window
of his music store.

It was not yet nine o'clock of a vivid
morning. Cornish had his floor and side-
244

walk sprinkled, his red and blue plush
piano spreads dusted. He sal at a fold"
ing table well back in the store, and opened
a law book.

For half an hour he read. Then he found
himself looking off the page, stabbed by a
reflection which always stabbed him anew:
Was he really getting anywhere with his
law? And where did he really hope to get?
Of late when he awoke at night this ques-
tion had stood by the cot, waiting.

The cot had appeared there in the back
of the music store, behind a dark sateen cur-
tain with too few rings on the wire. How
httle else was in there, nobody knew. But
those passing in the late evening saw the
blur of bis kerosene lamp behind that cur-
tain and were smitten by a reahstie illusion
of personal loneliness.

It was behind that curtain that these un-
reasoning questions usually attacked him,
when his giant, wavering shadow had died
upon the wall and the faint smell of fhe
extinguished lamp went with him to his
245

Miss Lulu Bett

bed; or when he waked before any sign of
dawn. In the mornings all was cheerful
and wonted — the question had not before
attacked him among his red and blue plush
spreads, his golden oak and ebony cases, of
a sunshiny morning.

A step at his door set him flying. He
wanted passionately to sell a piano.

"Weill" he cried, when he saw his visitor.

It was Lulu, in her dark red suit and hi
tilted hat.

"Weill" she also said, and seemed to have
no idea of saying anything else. Her ex-
citement was so obscure that he did not dis-
cern it.

"You're out early," said he, participating
in the village chorus of this bright challenj
at this hour.

"Oh, no," said Lulu.

He looked out the window, pretending
to be caught by something passing, leaned
to see it the better.

"Oh, how'd you get along last night?'
246

le J

ve^^
;x-

is-

September

he asked, and wondered why he had not
thought to say it before.

"All right, thank you," said Lulu.

"Was he — about the letter, you know?"

"Yes," she said, "but that didn't mat-
ter. You'll be sure," she added, "not to say
anything about what was in the letter?"

"Why, not till you tell me I can," said
Cornish, "but won't everybody know now?"

"No," Lulu said.

At this he had no more to say, and feel-
ing his speculation in his eyes, dropped
them to a piano scarf from which he be-
gan flicking invisible specks.

"I came to tell you good-bye," Lulu
laid.

"Good-bye!"

"Yes. I'm going oflF — for a while. My
satchel's in the bakery — I had my breakfast
in the bakery."

"Sayl" Cornish cried warmly, "Hksr
everything wasn't all right last night?"

"As right as it can ever be with me," she

tm. "Oh, yes. Dwight forgave me."
217

^Bsaid

Miss Lulu Bett

"Forgave you I"

She smiled, and trembled.

"Look here," said Cornish, "yoa oome
here and sit down and tell me about this."

He led her to the folding table, as the
only social spot in that vast area of his,
seated her in the one chair, and for himself
brought up a piano stool. But after all
she told him nothing. She merely took the
comfort of his kindly indignation.

"It came out all right," she said only.
"But I won't stay there any mOTe. I can't
do that." ■

"Then what are you going to do?" V

"In Millton yesterday," she said, "I saw
an advertisement in the hotel — they wanted
a chambermaid."

"Oh, Miss Bett!" he cried. At that name
she flushed. "Why," said Cornish, "you
must have been coming from Millton yes-
terday when I saw you. I noticed Miss Di

had her bag " He stopped, stared.

"You brought her back I" he deduced every-
thing.

248

September

"Ohl" said Lulu. "Oh, no — I mean "

"I heard about the eloping again this
morning," he said. "That's just what you
did — you brought her back."

"You mustn't tell thatl You won't?
[ You won't!"

"No. 'Course not." He mulled it. "You
tell me this : Do they know? I mean about
^ your going after her?"

"No."

"You never toldl"

"They don't know she went."

"That's a funny thing," he blurted out,
I "for you not to tell her folks — I mean,
' right off. Before last night. . . ."

"You don't know them. Dwight'd never
let up on that — ^he'd ^ohe her about it after
a while."

"But it seems "

"Ina'd talk about disgracing Tier. They
wouldn't know what to do. There's no
sense in telling them. They aren't a mother
and father," Lulu said.

Cornish was not accustomed to deal with

Miss Lfulu Belt

SO much reality. But Lulu's reality he could
grasp.

"You're a trump anyhow," he aflSrmed.

"Oh, no," said Lulu modestly.

Tes, she was. He insisted upon it.

"By George," he exclaimed, "you don't
find very many married women with as
good sense as you've got."

At this, just as he was agonising because
he had seemed to refer to the truth that she
was, after all, not married, at this Lulu
laughed in some amusement, and said noth-
ing.

"You've been a jewel in their home all
right," said Cornish. "I bet they'll miss
you if you do go."

"They'll miss my cooking," Lulu said
without bitterness.

"They'll miss more than that, I know.
I've often watched you there "

"You have?" It was not so much pleas-
ure as passionate gratitude which lighted
her eyes,

250

September

"You made the whole place," said Cor-

"You don't mean just the cooking?"

"No, no. I mean — well, that first njght
■when you played croquet. I felt at home
when you came out."

That look of hers, rarely seen, whicH
was no less than a look of loveliness, came
now to Lulu's face. After a pause she said:

"I never had but one compliment before
that wasn't for my cooking." She seemed
to feel that she must confess to that one.
"He told me I done my hair up nice." She
added conscientiously: "That was after I
took notice how the ladies in Savannah,
Georgia, done up theirs."

"Well, well," said Cornish only.

"Well," said Lidu, "I must be going
now. I wanted to say good-bye to you —
wid there's one or two other places. . . ."

"I hate to have you go," said Cornish,
and tried to add something. "I hate to hare
you go," was all tliat he •oold find to add,
S!61

Miss Lmlu Bett

Lulu rose. "Oh, well," was all that ^ie

could find.

They shook hands. Lulu laug^ung a, little.
Cornish followed her to the door. He had
begun on "Look here, I wish . . . ** whoi
Lulu said "good-bye," and paused, wishing
intensely to know what he would hare said.
But all that he said was: "Good-bye. I
wish you weren't going."

"So do I," said Lulu, and wen% still
lau^iing.

Cornish saw her red dress vanish from
his door, flash by his window, her head
averted. And there settled uprai him a de-
pression out of all proportion to the slow
depression of his days. This was l
it assailed him, absorbed him.

He stood staring out the window. Some
one passed with a greeting of which he was
conscious too late to return. He wandered
back down the store and his pianos looked
back at him like strangers. Down there
was the green curtain which screened his
home life. He suddenly hated that green
252

September

curtain. He hated this whole place. For
the first time it occurred to him that be
hated Warbleton.

He came hack to his table, and sat down
before his lawbook. But he sat, *^hin on
chest, regarding it. No . . . nc escape
that way. . . .

A step at the door and he sprang up. It
was Lulu, coming toward him, her face
unsmiling but somehow quite lighted. In
her hand was a letter.

"See," she said. "At the office was
this. ..."

She thrust in bis hand the single sheet.
He read:

"... just wanted you to know you're
actually rid of me. I've heard from her,
in Brazil, She ran out of money and
thought of me, and her lawyer wrote to
me. . , , I've never been any good — Dwight
would teU you that if his pride would let
him tell the truth once in a while. But
there ain't anything in my life makes me
253

Miss Lulu Belt

feel as bad as this. ... I s'pose you
couldn't understand and I don't myself.
. . . Only the sixteen years keeping still
made me think she was gone sure . . . hut
you were so downright good, that's what
was the worst ... do you see what I want
to say . . ,"

Cornish read it all and looked at IjuIu.
She was grave and in her eyes there was a
look of dignity such as he had never seen
them wear. Incredible dignity.

"He didn't lie to get rid of me — ^and she
was alive, just as he thought she might be»"
she said.

"I'm glad," said Cornish.

"Yes," said Lulu. "He isn't quite so
bad as Dwight tried to make him out."

It was not of this that Cornish had been
thinking.

"!Now you're free," he said.

"Oh, that . , , " said Lulu.

She replaced her letter in its enrdo^.
854

"Now I'm really going," she said. "Good-
bye for sure this time. ..."

Her words trailed away. Cornish hai
laid bis hand on her arm.

"Don't say good-bye," he said.

"It's late," she said, "I "

"Don't you go," said Cornish.

She looked at him mutely.

"Do you think you could possibly stay
here with me?"

"Ohl" said Lulu, Bke no word.

He went on, not looking at her. "I
haven't got anything. I guess maybe you've
heard something about a little something
I'm supposed to inherit. Well, it's onljr
five hundred dollars."

His look searched her face, but she hardly
heard what he was saying.

"That little Warden house — it don't cost
much — you'd be surprised. Rent, I mean.
I can get it now. I went and looked at it

the other day, but then I didn't think "

he caught himself on that. "It don't cost
255

Miss Lulu Bett

near as much as this store. We could fur-
nish up the parlour with pianos "

He was startled by that "we," and began
again:

"That is, if you could ever think of sudi
a thing as marrying me."

"But," said Lulu. **Yau kn&a! Wliy,
don't the disgrace "

"What disgrace?'* asked Cornish.

"Oh," she said, "you — you **

"There's only this about that," s»d be.
"Of course, if you loved him very modi,
then I'd ought not to be talking this way
to you. But I didn't think "

"You didn't think what?"

"That you did care so very much — about
him. I don't know why."

She said; "I wanted somebody of my
own. That's the reason I done what I done.
I know that now."

"I figured that way," said Cornish.

They dismissed it. But now he brought
to bear something which he saw that she
should know.

256

September

'Xook here," he said, "I'd ought to tell
you. I'm — I'm awful lonesome myself.
This is no place to live. And I guess living
so is one reason why I want to get married.
I want some kind of a home."

He said it as a confession. She accepted
it as a reason.

"Of course," she said,

"I ain't never lived what you might say
private," said Cornish.

"I've lived too private," Lulu said.

"Then there's another thing." This was
harder to tell her. "I — I don't believe I'm
ever going to be able to do a thing with
law."

"I don't see," said Lulu, "how anybody
does."

"I'm not much good in a business way,"
he owned, with a faint laugh. "Sometimes
I think," he drew down his brows, "that I
may never be able to make any money."

She said: "Lots of men don't."

"Could you risk it with me?" ComisH
asked her. "There's nobody I've seen," he
257

Miss Lulu Beit

went on gently, "that I like as much as I
do you. I— I was engaged to a girl once,
but we didn't get along. I guess if you'd
be willing to try me, we would get along."

Lulu said: "I thought it was Di that
you "

"Miss Di? Why," said Cornish, "she's
a little kid. And," he added, "she's a little
liar."

"But I'm going on thirty-four."

"So am I!"

"Isn't there somebody "

"Look here. Do you like me ?"

"Oh, yes I"

"Well enough "

"It's you I was thinking of," said Lt
"I'd be all right."

"Thenl" Cornish cried, and he kissed 1

"And now," said Dwight, "nobody must
mind if I hurry a little wee bit. I've got
something on."

He and Ina and Monona were at dinner*!
258

Mrs. Bett was in her room. Di was not
there.

"Anything about Lulu?" Ina asked.

"Lulu?" Dwight stared. "Why should
I have anything to do about Lulu?"

"Well, but, Dwight — ^weVe got to do

"As I told you this morning," he ob-
served, "we shall do nothing. Your sister
is of age — I don't know about the sound
mind, but she is certainly of age. If she
chooses to go away, she is free to go where
she will."

"Yes, but, Dwight, where has she gone?
Where could she go? Where "

"You are a question-box," said Dwight
playfuUy. "A question-box."

Ina had burned her plump wrist on the
oven. She hfted her arm and nursed it.

"I'm certainly going to miss her if she
stays away very long," she remarked.

"Ycj should be suflBcient imto your little
self," said Dwight.

259

Miss Lulu Belt

"That's all right," said Ina, "except when
you're getting dinner."

"I want some crust coflFee," announced
Monona firmly.

"You'll have nothing of the sort," said
Ina. "Drink your milk."

"As I remarked," Dwight went on, "I'm
in a tiny wee bit of a hurry."

"Well, why don't you say what for?" his
Ina asked.

She knew that he wanted to be asked,
and she was sufficiently willing to play his
games, and besides she wanted to know.
But she Was hot.

"I am going," said Dwight, "to tak^
Grandma Gates out in a wheel-chair, for an
hour."

"Where did you get a wheel-chair, fo^
mercy sakes?"

"Borrowed it from the railroad com-
pany," said Dwight, with the triumph
peculiar to the resourceful man. "Why I
never did it before, I can't imagine. There
that chair's been in the depot ever since I

can remember — saw it every time I took
the train — and yet I never once thought of
grandma."

"My, Dwight," said Ina, "how good you
are!"

"Nonsense!" said he.

"Well, you are. Why don't I send her
over a baked apple? Monona, you take
Grandma Gates a baked apple — no. You
shan't go till you drink your milk."

"I don't want it."

"Drink it or mamma won't let you go."

Monona drank it, made a piteous face,
took the baked apple, ran.

"The apple isn't very good," said Ina,
"but it shows my good will."

"Also," said Dwight, "it teaches Monona
a life of thoughtfulness for others."

"That's what I always think," his Ina
said.

"Can't vou get mother to come out?"
Dwight inquired.

"I had so much to do getting dinner
onto the table, I didn't try," Ina confessed.
261

Miss Lulu Bett

"You didn't have to try," Mrs. Bett's
voice sounded. "I was coming when I got
rested up."

She entered, looking vaguely about. "I
want Lulie," she said, and the comers of
her mouth drew down. She ate her dinner
cold, appeased in vague areas by sudi
martyrdom. They were still at table when
the front door opened.

"Monona hadn't ought to use the front
door so common," Mrs. Bett complained.

But it was not Monona, It was Lulu
and Cornish.

"Weill" said Dwight, tone curving down-
ward.

"Well!" said Ina, in replica.

"Lulie!" said Mrs. Bett, and left her
dinner, and went to her daughter and put
her hands upon her.

"We wanted to tell you first," Cornish
said. "We've just got married."

"Forcuermore !" said Ina.

"What's this?" Dwight sprang to hia
feet. "You're joMngl" he cried with hope.

"No/* Cornish said soberly. "We're
married — ^just now. Methodist parsonage.
We've had our dinner," he added hastily.

"Where'd you have it?" Ina demanded,
for no known reason.

"The bakery," Cornish replied, and
flushed.

"In the dining-room part," Lulu added.

Dwight's sole emotion was his indigna-
tion.

"Wbat on earth did you do it for?" he
put it to them. "Married in a bakery "

No, no. They explained it again.
Neither of them, they said, wanted tlie fuss
of a, wedding.

Dwight recovered himself in a measure.
"I'm not surprised, after all," he said.
*'Lulu usually marries in this way."

Mrs. Bett patted her daughter's arm.
"Lulie," she said, "why, Lulie. You ain't
been and got married twice, have you?
After waitin' so long?"

"Don't be disturbed. Mother Bett,"
Dwight eried. "She wasn't married that
268

Miss Lulu Bett

first time, if you Temember. No
about it!"

Ina's little shriek sounded.

"Dwight!" she cried. "Now everybody'Il
have to know that. You'll have to tell
about Ninian now — and his other wifel"

Standing between her mother and Cor-
nish, an arm of each about her. Lulu looked
across at Ina and Dwight, and they all
saw in her face a horrified realisation.

"Ina!" she said. "Dwight! Vou wiU
have to tell now, won't you? Why I never
thought of that."

At this Dwight sneered, was sneering
still as he went to give Grandma Gates
her ride in the wheel-chair and as he
stooped with patient kindness to tuck
her in.

The street door was closed. If Mrs.
Bett was peeping through the blind,
one saw her. In the pleasant mid-day light
under the maples, Sir. and Mrs. Nral
Cornish were hurrying toward
station.

264

oward the rallwaj^H

femiiif

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DATE DUE

DOC

291998

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